


because he strayed across the path

by LullabyKnell



Series: LullabyKnell and the Harry Potter Fics [12]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Character Interpretation, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Book 3: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Canon-Typical Violence, Feel-good, Feels, Fix-It, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Light Angst, Long, M/M, Mild Language, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Slash, Prisoner of Azkaban AU, Slow Build, Slow To Update, Universe Alteration, WIP, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-10
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2018-08-30 03:45:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 53,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8517286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LullabyKnell/pseuds/LullabyKnell
Summary: Prisoner of Azkaban AU: After the Gryffindor-Hufflepuff Quidditch match, Harry finds himself striking up two unlikely friendships. The first is with Hufflepuff's captain, Cedric Diggory. The second is with the Grim. You know, that canine specter of Death that's been trying to kill him. Between that and learning the Patronus Charm, surviving Sirius Black, passing his classes, training for the Quidditch House Cup, trying to figure out why Professor Lupin treats him so strangely, helping Hermione fight for werewolf rights, and more, Harry seems to be in for yet another busy year at Hogwarts. (Tl;dr: an alternate canon for POA, featuring crushes on handsome Hufflepuffs and canine Marauder dads.)





	1. The Unexpected Badger

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so... honestly, I was planning on holding this in reserve until it was finished because I'm starting to really hate having so many WIPs. But today has really sucked for obvious reasons and I don't know anymore. Right now, I just want to do whatever I can to make people feel better and give them what little escapism I can. So this isn't finished and the updates are going to be REALLY SLOW (don't you dare beg or bother me about them), but take this as a virtual hug from me. We'll be alright; somehow, we'll be alright. 
> 
> As for more fanfic-related notes: 
> 
> Firstly, I have substituted my own class schedule (because canon schedule doesn't work), which is likely flimsy and not at all representative of a proper magical education. But I built it around the teachers, who have to teach seven years of classes, and so there’s a number of empty periods for some students that I’ve decided are for study periods and extracurriculars. The main issue with having done this is that my class schedule allows for Hermione to take all classes without the use of a time-turner; so we’re going to assume something along the lines of: Hermione was given the time-turner to keep up with her workload, and is scheduled to be studying in the Great Hall with Harry and Ron (under teacher supervision) at the same time that she’s taking a class, or takes two classes at the same time so she can study with Harry and Ron and participate in extracurriculars. 
> 
> Secondly, while I have done my best to right the class schedule and will be writing around and changing events to suit my class schedule, I have no idea how to get everything to nicely suit the actual full moon. So I have gone along with J.K.’s full moon schedule, and the full moon now happens on Thursday, November 11th, instead of Monday, November 29th. (Gryffindor’s last DADA class of the week is on Thursday now.) 
> 
> Thirdly, I’ve also pushed Quidditch and Hogsmeade stuff around. I didn't really think anyone would notice or mind, but on the off chance you do, don't worry, it's for the purpose of making a certain bisexual disaster moon over Cedric Diggory and the like. Good causes. I plead fanfiction. 
> 
> Fourthly is not schedule related and is a bit more serious (pun intended but not relevant). While I'm shipping Harry/Cedric here, heavy to the point of a blunt instrument pretty much, it's going to be pre-slash and purely pre-slash for the course of this fic (potential sequels, we'll revisit). So you can all breathe easy and enjoy Harry's natural adolescent crush and their (harmlessly and unintentionally sort of flirty) friendship. 
> 
> Finally, this fic is dedicated to everyone who's followed and supported me through my HP fics (and all my other fics). Here's to you. You fucking rock. I love you.

  It started after Harry was attacked by dementors during the Gryffindor-Hufflepuff Quidditch match in third year. Or, at least, it simply became strong enough after that moment to start making Harry’s heart do funny little jolts in the hallways sometimes, and his legs choose a certain side of the Gryffindor table so that his eyes could wander the Great Hall to a certain spot at another table.

 It started when Harry was alone in the hospital wing, after the team had been shooed out. He was supposed to be getting changed or something, but… he couldn’t stop looking at the broken broomstick at the end of his bed. It felt as though he’d lost one of his best friends.

 It started when someone interrupted his quiet mourning by knocking lightly on the neighbouring bed’s end-table like it was a doorframe.

 Harry looked up and his mouth parted with surprise. Cedric Diggory was standing by the neighbouring bed, looking very sheepish and out-of-place and tired… and still unfairly handsome. The Hufflepuff Seeker and captain was still dressed in his yellow and black Quidditch uniform. The robe and leathers were charmed mostly clean and dry, save for a few mud-damped ends, but his goggles were still rain-flecked, where they had been pushed up his forehead into dark, wet hair.

 “Hey, Potter,” Diggory said quietly, pushing up a smile despite his peaked look. “D’you mind if we talk?”

 Harry, still somewhat taken aback by the sudden appearance of anyone, much less someone so unexpected, mutely shook his head. Diggory’s weak smile widened at the given permission and he approached Harry’s bed. He gave the broken Nimbus a grimace before taking a seat in one of the chairs the Gryffindor team had left behind.

 Harry was very glad that Diggory took a seat, because the other boy was quite tall – Harry probably would have only reached his chin if they were both standing. Harry still felt quite small next to Diggory, though, and somewhat raggedy and pathetic too – with his untameable hair and awful glasses, his mud-splattered robe and beaten leathers, and the splinters that had used to be his broomstick.

 “So… this is… awkward,” Diggory said, making a rueful sort of grimace. His gaze was thankfully fixed on his hands, folded in his lap, but then he raised it to focus wholly on Harry. “I’ll try to be quick about this. I… pretty much had to beg Madam Pomfrey on my knees for her to let me in here for just five minutes.”

 Diggory tried to smile again, but it fell a little flat at whatever he saw on Harry’s face. Whatever was on his face, Harry could not have said, because he had very little idea of what was happening.

 Harry was not as surprised as he should have been that Diggory had miraculously managed to make the formidable Madam Pomfrey bend on her visitation policies. Especially if he had been looking beseechingly up at her while asking. Had the Hufflepuff captain’s eyes always been that odd, warm grey? Or had Harry simply never gotten close enough to notice before?

  _Punch him in his perfect nose,_ some angry, jealous part of Harry suggested. It was the same part that whined that Diggory being taller and broader in the harsh winds was  _unfair_ , and also the same part that bristled at Diggory still having a broomstick that was more than broken bristles. The part that panged with the sheer injustice of Diggory not falling off his broom, or being cursed by the Grim, or overly affected by dementors to the point of hearing a stranger’s dying screams.

 It wasn’t  _fair_ that Diggory had caught the Snitch, really, and it definitely wasn’t fair that it  _was_ fair!

 _Kick him in his perfect mouth,_ the jealous part agreed fiercely.

 “So, that… wasn’t fair,” Diggory said.

 That startled Harry out of his stunned muteness. “Oh, no,” he objected, even though that jealous part of him preened very smugly.  _Yes, it wasn’t fair. Good on you for noticing, you perfect git._ “You caught the Snitch fair and squa-”

 Diggory shook his head and said firmly, “It wasn’t fair. Look… I offered to replay the match, but Wood… refused… stridently. And I didn’t want Wo- … I didn’t want anything to make you think that you deserved to lose because you were attacked by  _dementors._ ” His jaw set. “That’s not at all right.”

 “But I  _fell off_ my broom,” Harry pointed out helplessly. “You didn’t. The dementors didn’t overwhelm  _you._ And you were way ahead of me anyway, even before that. You caught the Snitch fairl-”

 Diggory’s brows scrunched up, his nose wrinkling, and Harry suddenly noticed several light freckles scattered over it and his cheekbones. “Potter,” he said slowly, face smoothing into polite bewilderment, “I don’t know if you know this but there  _aren’t supposed_ to be dementors in a Quidditch match… Or anywhere  _near_ a Qudditch match… Or even on school grounds at all.”

 Harry frowned, feeling stupid and hating it. “I  _know_ that.”

 “The presence of dementors automatically makes the whole game subject to interference,” Diggory argued, like he’d said it many times before already, lifting his chin and face settling into firmness again. “I asked Professor Lupin about them on the way in, and he says it’s not at all your fault if you’re more vulnerable to them than most people.”

 “Professor Lupin? He’s here?” Harry repeated, blinking owlishly. “I thought… he was ill.”

 “Yeah, just outside. He… he looks… er, terrible.”

 The jealous part of Harry didn’t like how easily Diggory said that, but the rest of him noticed that Diggory looked quite concerned. Harry felt that concern too, as much as he unreasonably disliked having anything in common with Diggory. Professor Lupin was the best Defense teacher they had ever had and Harry dreaded having Snape as a substitute again.

 He still hadn’t done that essay.

 “He’s talking with Madam Pomfrey,” Diggory said, and then he gave Harry a wry sort of smile that made some part of Harry’s chest flop uncomfortably. “Well, being berated by Madam Pomfrey, at least. I think he was worried about you.”

 “Oh,” Harry said, for lack of anything else to say.

 He thought, for a moment, that he rather liked the idea that Professor Lupin had come to see him in the hospital wing, even while ill. It made a different sort of uncomfortable flop in Harry’s chest, one accompanied by a glowing warmth inside. It made Harry feel… special.

 But it didn’t last long before the pit in his stomach pointed out that Lupin was probably just worried because he knew Harry was weak against the dementors – which was very embarrassing, really. Lupin might not even be here for Harry, no matter what Diggory thought, and was probably talking to Madam Pomfrey about his own illness. It would be terrible if Lupin had forced himself out of bed, still ill, to check on Harry for being too weak to stay on a broomstick.

 Diggory’s wry smile dropped, as he seemed to notice Harry’s drop in mood. He sat up straight, leaned back, and then gave a great, silent sigh. The motion of this broke Harry out of his thoughts about what a terrible person he was and how Professor Lupin was far too nice.

 “We shouldn’t have been playing in that storm at all,” Diggory said quietly, looking off towards the rain-splattered windows at the end of the hospital wing. He looked even more tired and peaked than before, Harry noticed, now that he wasn’t smiling.

 “They were awful Quidditch conditions to start with,” Harry agreed awkwardly.

 Diggory blinked, then looked at Harry again. “To start with…?” he repeated, before something dawned on him and the wry smile returned. “Before the dementors showed up?”

 “Yeah…?”

 Diggory laughed, very hoarse and somewhat incredulously. “Well… that’s one way to put it,” he said, staring and smiling directly at Harry again, more genuinely now.

  _Flop,_ went Harry’s chest, much to the displeasure of the jealous part of him.

 “You had… another encounter with the dementors on the train, didn’t you?” Diggory asked, trading his smile for an expression a bit more solemn. He gave a low whistle when Harry nodded uncertainly. “Wow… you’ve got rotten luck, Potter.”

  _You have no idea,_ Harry thought. But instead, he said, “Pretty good luck too, really.”

 Diggory blinked, then smiled. “That’s one way to put it,” he said, then he leaned in again, intense and unsmiling. “I would… like to try and make this up to you, if I can. Wood’s refused a replay and… well… my team’s said they’ll kick me out of Hufflepuff if I try to forfeit, but… there’s got to be something.”

 Harry, thoroughly taken aback, looked away and about. Because Diggory’s bright grey eyes were simultaneously very difficult to look away from and uncomfortable to meet, and he had no idea what in the world to say. He looked about, as though something in the room would suddenly bring something to mind, and his eyes quickly settled on the broken Nimbus 2000 at the end of his bed.

  _No, that’s far too much to ask,_ Harry thought, clearing his throat. “Not really,” he said.

 Unfortunately, Diggory had noticed where Harry’s eyes had gone and was grimacing again at the broken broomstick. “Yeah… sorry about your broom, Potter,” he said, and the jealous part of Harry reared up the idea he was getting  _pitied._ “I don’t think my allowance would cover that.”

 Diggory seemed to think for a second, then added uncertainly, “And I don’t think you’ll have much luck getting any Galleons out of the Whomping Willow’s pockets. I mean, I’ll  _root_  for you, but...”

 Harry snorted before he could help himself and Diggory smiled delightedly at him.

 “Come on, Potter,” he said, friendlier and more at ease than before. “There’s really got to be something. I won’t do your homework for you, but I’m a fifth-year, so I could probably manage help.”

 “I don’t like the sound of ‘probably’,” Harry said dryly.

 Diggory laughed quietly. “No? Alright, how about…” Diggory dropped his voice, which made Harry’s stupid chest  _flop_ uncomfortably for no reason whatsoever, then said, “A free pass in the halls? So long as you’re not lugging Firewhiskey into the castle… and swear never to tell anyone I neglected my prefect duties.”

 Harry shook his head, stifling laughter. Even if he used all his fingers and toes, he could not count the number of times he had passed a patrolling prefect or professor using his Invisibility Cloak. He had not been out much this year – compared to second year before the basilisk, and all of first year after Christmas on the nights he couldn’t sleep – but it was entirely possible that he’d already had a “free pass” past Diggory.

 “No? Alright, good,” Diggory said, smiling a little mischievously. “Then I won’t lose sleep for doing something so morally reprehensible, or my badge when Weasley somewhat manages to sense my misdemeanour and revoke my prefect status. I would have had to drop out of Hogwarts to avoid my parents’ Howlers. Thank Merlin, Potter, you really saved me there.”

 That was what finally broke the dam, and Harry laughed.

 He pictured Diggory all exhausted and tormented for the grave crime of letting a third-year pass after curfew without detention. Then Percy all puffed up with righteous anger, lecturing Diggory from a judge’s chair, Head Boy badge gleaming on his chest and wearing a horrible wig, demanding Diggory turn in his badge in front of a jury of equally angry professors. Then Diggory being chased out of the Great Hall, pursued by Howlers, and Oliver being so happy that the Gryffindor Quidditch captain proposed marriage to one of the owls that had carried it on the spot.

 At all that, Harry could not help himself and he laughed. He laughed so hard that there was nearly no sound at all. He could feel the beginnings of a stitch wheezing against his side when he could finally bring himself to stop. The jealous part of him was quiet now, nearly gone.

 “You don’t have to do anything,” Harry said to Diggory, finally, who was looking very quietly pleased with himself. “It wasn’t your fault the dementors were there. You don’t have to.”

 “Yeah,” Diggory agreed, then added, “but I want to do something.” He looked breathtakingly sincere, and a little anxious besides. “I feel bad, you know? And it would make me feel better if I could do something to make you feel a little better after… after  _that._ ”

 Diggory shuddered. “I don’t blame you at all for falling off your broom… especially since they looked to be going after you. I barely managed to stay on my broom,” he quietly admitted, “just while the Headmaster scared them all off.”

 Harry’s happy feelings soured some at what sounded a bit like pity to him, as well as the reminder of dementors and the loss of the Quidditch match, but… Diggory looked off towards the windows again and Harry had the opportunity to get a good luck at him again. Diggory really did look peaked – tired and grey and peaked – much like Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and Neville had all looked after Harry had fainted on the train.

 “Chocolate helps,” Harry said.

 Diggory looked at him, brows furrowed and nose scrunched again. “What?”

 “Chocolate,” Harry repeated awkwardly. “It helps after… dementors. Professor Lupin gave us all some after they boarded the train. Madam Pomfrey tried too. She said it’s a remedy.”

 “Huh,” Diggory said, sitting back. Then he snapped his fingers, face brightening and smiling brilliantly towards Harry. “I know! Chocolate! You can’t beat Honeydukes’ chocolate,” he said certainly. “I heard you’ve got trouble with Hogsmeade trips and it won’t leave me broke. Any allergies? Preferences?”

 Harry stared. “…What?” he said eloquently.

 Diggory looked at him, realizing that he’d gotten a bit loud, and repeated quietly, “Do you have any allergies or preferences when he comes to chocolate?”

 “Oh, uhm, not really?” Harry said, then realized what was happening. “Diggory, it’s fine, really-”

 Diggory gave him a very polite flat look. “I heard Wood is trying to drown himself in the showers,” he pointed out, “and I think he’d rather beat me with a broomstick than accept an offer to replay the match.”

 Harry would have objected, but… no, that was a fairly true assessment of Oliver Wood.

 “Come on,” Diggory said with an unfairly unfair smile. “Are you really turning down free Honeydukes chocolate?”

 Harry opened his mouth to object still, but his taste buds quickly reminded him of the obscenely delightful desserts that Ron and Hermione had brought back from Hogsmeade. It was a fairly good point that Diggory and his unfair smiling had just made, and Diggory  _was_ insisting.

 “Alright,” Harry said, before the jealous part of him could insist that anything they accept from Diggory be spat back in his lightly freckled and handsome face. His heart was doing all these strange little flops in his chest again, at the thought of Diggory giving him a gift, even just as a gesture of good sportsmanship.

 Diggory smiled widely, which did not help the somersaults going on under Harry’s ribs. “Great,” he said. “Thanks for humouring me, Potter.” He leaned in and whispered, “If anyone asks, you can say I bribed you to fall off the broom.”

 Harry’s brain thankfully stopped being horribly stunned at Diggory’s closeness, and Harry laughed – far more loudly than he meant to. He couldn’t tell if Diggory was actually funny or if the strangeness of this whole situation – or the broken broomstick at the end of his bed and the memories of the unknown woman’s screams – were getting to him. But, either way, laughter felt good.

 Diggory opened his mouth to say something else, but Madam Pomfrey’s head popped out from behind a door and suddenly she was bustling towards them with the force of a freight train. “Diggory! I said you could come in so long as you were quiet! Your five minutes are up! OUT! Out of my hospital wing!”

 Harry, who was trying very desperately to stifle his laughter, took one look at Diggory’s face and burst into renewed laughter. Diggory looked terrified, like a deer unexpectedly caught in headlights. Harry fell back into his pillows and snickered as Madam Pomfrey steamed towards them and Diggory jumped to his feet, accidentally knocking over his chair, fumbling to catch it and failing, and trying to stammer apologies all the while and turning increasingly red-faced.

 “Out, Diggory! OUT!” she said, flicking her wand at the chair and shooing at Diggory with her free hand. He was perhaps a foot taller than she was, but he scrambled out of her way as she henned him out of the room. “Go take a proper shower! Change out of those robes already! And drink some hot chocolate before you get a good night’s rest – Healer’s orders!”

 “Yes, I will, Madam Pomfrey, but-”

 “Mister Potter needs his rest! He’s not dying, Diggory, you can see him when it’s proper visiting hours tomorrow!” Madam Pomfrey said firmly. “Go get your own rest. And remember the hot chocolate! One cup before bed! And then one in the morning, for good measure. Now, OUT!”

 Diggory, henned efficiently and herded forcefully by the rhinoceros-freight-train that was Madam Pomfrey, gave Harry one last apologetic and commiserating look after his shoulder. Harry waved at him, smiling uncontrollably, and Diggory smiled back just before Madam Pomfrey shoved him out the door and slammed it firmly shut.

 “You’re too popular, Potter!” she said as she whirled on him, sniffing disapprovingly. “And you come here far too often, anyway!” She bustled back over to his bedside, flicking the righted chair over to stack at the end of the room. “I ought to just put your name on one of these, make it yours.”

 “I think that’s special treatment,” Harry pointed out, still unable to stop smiling.

 Madam Pomfrey regarded him for a moment, then something in her face softened. “Well, we’ve got to accommodate the needs of students, Mister Potter,” she said. “Now, come on, let’s get you cleaned up already and into some comfortable pyjamas so you can get your rest.”

~

 Harry felt much better after he’d had a proper shower and gotten changed into a pair of hospital pyjamas. Madam Pomfrey had cast a Warming Charm on them, so they felt absolutely blissful after his warm shower and that cold, stormy Quidditch match. Afterwards she set him up with a mug of hot chocolate in a bed that must have also had a Warming Charm on it, and Harry thought he might have been happy to stay right there for the rest of the weekend.

 Madam Pomfrey was insisting on keeping him here for the rest of the weekend, anyway, so that might have been the point. Comfortable in bed, with the chocolate warming him from head to toe on the inside, Harry didn’t feel much like arguing with her or complaining about it.

 He did refuse to let her throw away the shattered remains of his Nimbus 2000, though. She seemed miffed about that, and obviously disapproving whenever she laid eyes on it, but she didn’t argue either. The only thing she insisted on was cleaning the mud off it, if it was going to remain in her hospital wing, and then she didn’t bring up the subject again.

 Harry knew he was being a bit stupid about it, but he couldn’t bring himself to get rid of the broken broomstick. He knew that his Nimbus was beyond repair, but he couldn’t help it. It had been one of the first presents he’d ever gotten, after Hedwig from Hagrid, and flying was probably Harry’s most favourite part of magic. He didn’t feel properly sad about it, really, just a little empty, but he couldn’t bear to let go of it quite yet – whatever the consequences of keeping it near were.

 He read for a while, then ate an early dinner. All foods he liked, served on a tray by Madam Pomfrey, who checked on him frequently from her office and made clucking noises every time it looked like Harry wouldn’t finish something. Once she was satisfied with his performance and cleared away the tray, Harry went back to reading the  _Magical Creatures Almanac_  he’d borrowed from Madam Pomfrey’s little hospital wing library.

 He skipped over the entire D section, though.

 Harry read for quite a while – skimming over most of it, honestly, barely reading – before Madam Pomfrey came in and swiped the book out of his hands. She closed it on the W section, right after he’d finished Common Welsh Green and gotten almost all through Welsh Pixies. Harry was barely able to keep his eyes open by this point, and didn’t object as she told him to get his proper rest already, then started readying the hospital wing for the night.

 Ron and Hermione popped their heads through the door halfway through, clearly just come from dinner at the Great Hall. They made faces at Harry for a while, behind Madam Pomfrey’s back, before she noticed Harry poorly stifling laughter and chased them off. Hermione got a wave in and Ron made an excellent troll impression before they scurried off.

 Madam Pomfrey clucked disapprovingly after them, then at Harry for wheezing with laughter on his bed, but she had an upwards turn to her lips and a bright glint to her eye.

 Unfortunately, soon enough, Harry was left to go to sleep. All alone in a darkened hospital wing.

 He should have fallen asleep straight away – he was quite tired – but he found that he couldn’t. Now that he was alone, his mood slipped smoothly downwards. Even the memories of the visits from Ron and Hermione, the Gryffindor Team (excluding Oliver, who’d hopefully stopped trying to drown himself in the showers by now), and even Diggory couldn’t keep Harry’s mood up. Every time Harry tried to quiet his mind and fall asleep, awful thoughts drifted up for his perusal, determined to trouble him.

 It was going to be one of those bad nights, he could tell.

 The Quidditch match played again and again in his head. Not just the harsh winds and cold rain, with the feelings of pointless struggle and helplessness, but also that lightning-lit silhouette of an enormous dog in the topmost seats of the empty stands.

 Harry had yet to tell anyone about the Grim. He hadn’t even told Ron and Hermione, because he knew Ron would panic and Hermione would scoff at the apparition’s appearances. Harry didn’t know if he believed the superstition or not, but the fact remained that it had now appeared twice in highly unlikely and unexpected places – the park near Privet Drive and the topmost stands of Hogwarts’ Quidditch pitch could hardly be more different to Harry’s mind – and both times had been followed by near-fatal accidents.

 First, Harry had nearly been run over by the Knight Bus. Now, he had fallen fifty feet from his broom due to dementors. The Grim had immediately preceded both events.

 If it was all a coincidence, it was a ridiculously improbable one, so Harry was beginning to wonder if there was actual substance to the myth of the Grim. Was the Grim going to haunt him until he actually died? Preceding increasingly awful and frequent events until Harry’s luck ran out? Was he going to spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder for the beast?

 And all this wasn’t even getting started on the appearance of the dementors, which Harry thought he might actually look for over his shoulder for the rest of his life. The mere thought of them left Harry feeling sick and humiliated. Even if Diggory said it wasn’t Harry’s fault if he was affected more, Diggory was obviously far too nice to be trusted – no one else collapsed every time they saw one; no one else seemed to hear echoes in their head of their dying mother.

 Harry figured that bit about his mother out on his own. During the night hours in the hospital wing, he lay awake and stared fuzzily at strips of moonlight on the ceiling, hearing the screaming voice echo over and over again. And he soon knew who the begging and pleading and screaming belonged to. It was obvious, in hindsight, and with so much time alone to think about it. 

 With the presence of the dementors, Harry finally knew his mother’s voice.

 Harry could hear the last moments of Lily Potter’s life and her attempts to protect him, Harry, from Lord Voldemort. Then Voldemort’s high, cold laughter before he murdered her… and then… her dying scream.

 Harry eventually dozed into something resembling sleep, but it was fitful and full of dreams of clammy, rotted hands around a dry wand and desperate pleading. Then with bright flashes of green light, a great burning, and overwhelming fear. Harry drifted back to bleary wakefulness, once or twice, to dwell again on his mother’s voice, confused and helpless.

 After a particularly terrible dream, Harry jerked awake, feeling chilled to the very centre of his chest. This time, Harry’s head had unwillingly and unwittingly combined the beautiful shade from the Mirror of Erised with this new sampling of his mother, and added the face on the back of Quirrell’s head with a body of its own, to recreate the horrible scene the dementors pushed on him. It had seemed so real that Harry was still blinking it out of his eyes even minutes later, rubbing at his faintly prickling scar.

 He found himself wiping a few tears away from his eyes, alone in the dark of the hospital wing. He felt humiliated and lost and strangely empty – and he wished with all his heart that there was someone he could ask about these things.

 Why did the dementors affect him so badly? Why did the dementors affect him like  _this?_

 But he was alone, and he could barely think of a single person who could help him.

 All through the awful night, however, there was no sign of Professor Lupin. 

 


	2. The Dog's Breakfast

 Harry woke several times throughout the hospital wing’s night hours, but he finally woke up sometime before dawn. The hospital wing was still quite dark, not even vaguely alight with the grey of pre-sunrise, as Harry was groggily pulled into consciousness by the creak of a door.

 He felt, to be entirely honest, awful. His eyes had been crusted shut, his mouth tasted foul and stale, and his neck was very sharply cross with him. He didn’t move, nor did he want to, lest he make his neck even unhappier with him or tempt the wrath of his limbs. Some of his limbs felt very numb, or prickly, and Harry knew he’d probably fallen asleep in several odd and uncomfortable positions over the course of the night.

 Right now, thankfully, his position was alright – comfortably on his stomach, arms around and under his pillow, covered by a heavy and deliciously warm blanket. Despite feeling a bit like he’d joined his broom in the Whomping Willow, he could have easily fallen back asleep. He might have drifted back off, really, if not for the quiet  _click-click-click_ coming towards him like footsteps.

 It definitely wasn’t human, whatever it was. It sounded very much like Fang, honestly, crossing Hagrid’s hut to say hello or to plop down in front of the fireplace. Only on stone instead of wooden floors and at a quicker, much more careful pace than Fang’s heavy lumber. Harry couldn’t see whatever it was from his position, only hear it, and his growing curiosity was waking him up.

 The sound stopped right at the end of Harry’s bed, which made Harry’s heart stop too - well, skip a beat or two, at least. His only clues as to what was there was quiet breathing, which didn’t sound very human either, and a faint smell that definitely belonged in a Care of Magical Creatures class.

 Harry looked over his shoulder before he could really think that over. It probably would have been safer to play dead – and it wasn’t like he could really see much of anything without his glasses – but he was tired and curious and some part of absolutely refused to believe that even several rampaging mountain trolls could have gotten past Madam Pomfrey. Even at pre-dawn on a Sunday morning.

 However, even without his glasses, it was very clear what was at the end of Harry’s bed. He did not need his glasses to recognize that shaggy black fur, as blurred as it was. Nor did he need his glasses to recognize the silhouette of an enormous dog, as tall as Harry’s hospital bed, sniffing at the broken remains of Harry’s broomstick.

 The Grim was at the end of his bed.

 Harry was so surprised that he didn’t notice that his sheet had gotten somewhat tangled in his tossing and turning. He tried to lunge for his wand and his glasses, both resting in plain blurriness on the bedside table. Instead of that happening, Harry tripped on his bedsheets, overbalanced, and tumbled straight out of bed.

 Luckily, most of his sheets and blankets came with him, so the landing on the cold hospital wing floor was much softer than it could have been. It still hurt, but Harry’s head had thankfully missed the bedside table.

 After a minute or so of panicked heartbeats, in which Harry did not hear the bustling footsteps of Madam Pomfrey or any sort of noise from the Grim, he dared to peek out from his bundle.

 He came nearly face to face with the Grim, which seemed to be sniffing at the blankets. But strangely, as soon as their eyes met, the enormous Grim quickly stopped looming and backed off. The blurred black shape retreated to the end of Harry’s hospital bed, only its head and shoulders peering around.

 After an awkward several seconds of staring and heart-pounding, the Grim sat. Harry saw a pink blur appear out of the end of the snout-shaped part of the black blur’s head. Then, after some more staring, the Grim lowered its head-shaped blur down and its shaggy mass dropped to the floor. The haunting omen of oncoming death was lying on the floor, in a very dog-like manner. It seemed to be staring up at Harry.

 Harry very carefully reached up on the bedside table for his wand and glasses. He fumbled the glasses on his face and held the wand very tightly in his hand, trying to untangle himself from his blankets and sheets as subtly as possible. All while maintaining eye contact with the Grim.

 Did falling out of a hospital bed count as a Grim-following, near-death experience? Harry suddenly wasn’t so sure about his Grim curse, because the nightmarish creature looked a lot less monstrous now that he could actually see it. Honestly, the omen of death just looked like a very large dog – albeit one that was unnervingly staring somewhat hungrily at him from its position at the end of his bed.

 It was a very thin and mangy dog, Harry noticed, despite its size. The Grim looked like it had not had a good meal for weeks and a decent bath for far,  _far_ longer, but… also… like a dog.

 After some more long seconds of staring, the Grim rolled over onto its back, paws in the air, and cocked its head at Harry – its pink tongue lolled out of its mouth. The pose looked like the dog was… cute? Or, well, would have been cute if it wasn’t so large, half-starved, muddied from paw to ear, and like an omen of death that had been haunting Harry for the past three months.

 Harry slowly got to his feet and looked around the hospital wing. Maybe it was a pet? The list had said that students were only permitted a cat, owl, or toad, but that certainly hadn’t stopped Lee Jordan from bringing his tarantula, Miss Sweet-Pea, into Gryffindor Tower. Harry had even heard from Ginny that one of her roommates had a very friendly pet bat. A dog was a lot bigger than a tarantula or bat, of course, but he’d also heard about a Ravenclaw who’d almost gotten away with keeping a pig larger than a trunk.

 But there wasn’t an owner in sight. Besides Harry and the Grim, there was no one in the still dark hospital wing, and there weren’t any shouts or footsteps coming from outside the door either.

 He bundled up his blankets and put them back on the bed, then looked at the Grim. (Lost pet? Omen of death? Really random stray dog?) The Grim had rolled back over and was slowly standing again, so it could move forward to sniff at Harry’s shins and then softly bump its head into his free hand.

 Harry, who had never been around a dog that belonged to someone other than Marge Dursley, found himself awkwardly petting the Grim. All he had to go on were Mrs. Figg’s many cats, which he’d never been very keen on, and Crookshanks. Hermione’s cat did, with great dignity, allow Harry to warily pet him, but unless Harry wanted to be glared at by Ron, the two of them had to keep petting to rare and clandestine occasions.

 Harry couldn’t help but smile when he scratched behind the Grim’s ears and its tail wagged keenly. His anxiety and fear faded quite a bit, in the face of the happy growling sounds the Grim made. He thought that perhaps the idea of the death omen dog had been a coincidence all along, watching the Grim’s tongue loll out again – Divination was bit rubbishy, anyway.

 “You need a  _bath_ ,” Harry said quietly, as his hand came away from the Grim’s fur caked with dirt. He made sure to keep it away from his pyjamas and the white hospital sheets, then smiled when the Grim made an agreeable snorting sound, which was followed by a very heavy sigh.

 “I don’t suppose you belong to anyone, then? Harry asked – if the dog did, which seemed unlikely, its owner wasn’t taking very good care of it. “I mean, Hagrid might get a dog that looked like the Grim -” The dog stared at Harry at that, cocking its head. “- but he’d at least feed you.”

 The Grim made a keening sound at the mention of food, its tail and ears dropping. It gave Harry a wistful look and nose a little at where pockets might have been if Harry had any. Harry showed the Grim his empty hands and it gave a disappointed whimper. Harry wished he had something to feed it – he knew a little something about going hungry, and he was almost able to count the Grim’s ribs through all that dirty, shaggy fur.

 “I’m sorry,” Harry said, genuinely apologetic, reaching out to scratch behind the Grim’s ears again, “but I don’t have anything. And I don’t have a kitchen to sneak anything from.”

 The Grim’s drooping ears suddenly perked up and it bounced to its feet. It strained towards the door, staring beseechingly at Harry all the while, as though trying to convince Harry to follow it. It took a few steps away, staring back at Harry, and whined.

 Harry almost took a step after it, but he was wary. He’d get in massive trouble with Madam Pomfrey if she caught him. And he was pretty sure that following strange, death-omen-looking dogs into the late autumn morning-night, when Sirius Black could be loose on the school grounds, was one of the absolute last things any adult would want him to do. Teachers had been finding excuses to follow him about the halls ever since Sirius Black broke in, as though he would be attacked in the middle of the day!

 But then the Grim whined again, rather pathetically, and Harry couldn’t help but notice again how thin the creature was. And then his stomach gave a sympathetic grumble. He hadn’t eaten since his own early dinner – he was famished, really, now that he realized it – and he remember all too well many unhappy, hungry mornings on Privet Drive. No one should go hungry, he thought, including Grims.

 Well, he’d just see where the Grim wanted to go and help it if he could. He didn’t have to leave the Hogwarts’ grounds if he didn’t want to, or even the castle, for which security had seemed to double since Sirius Black’s break-in. Maybe he’d only be gone for five minutes or so, and he’d have his wand with him all the while. What were the chances that something would happen, anyway? Surely even mass-murderers slept in far past dawn on Sunday mornings?

 “This is going to get me into so much trouble if we’re caught,” Harry said finally, pulling on the hospital slippers left under his bed. He tried and failed not to smile at how the “fearsome” Grim keened and bounced delightedly, grinning a lolling canine grin as Harry went to follow it.

~

 The Grim led Harry easily through the greyed and dark hallways. It was very sure of where it was going, stopping only to look over its shoulder at Harry and turning back only to loop playfully and affectionately around Harry’s legs. Soon, Harry could barely remember thinking that such a happy and friendly dog was a frightening omen of death or some kind of monster.

 Contrary to Harry’s fears, the Grim did not lead him out of the castle, but rather deeper into it. They went from the Hospital Wing towards the Great Hall, then down a staircase that Harry saw most frequented by Hufflepuffs heading towards their dormitories.

 At the first step, Harry was struck by a number of wonderful smells, like Mrs. Weasley cooking breaking at the Burrow. The delicious air only got thicker as they went down, and by the bottom of the stone steps, the way seemed to thrum with warmth and welcoming. Torches yawned to faintly glowing life as they passed. The Grim led Harry down a mostly unfamiliar corridor, which was broad and decorated by numerous cheerful paintings, mostly depicting food and all with handsome, gilded frames.

 The Grim stopped around the middle of the hall, and Harry felt that they ought to have been just under the Great Hall. Then the Grim looked pointedly between Harry and the large painting in front of them. Harry stared at the gigantic silver bowl overflowing with fruit and, feeling confused and more than slightly misplaced, just looked blankly back at the dog.

 Getting the hint that Harry didn’t have any, the Grim heaved another sigh. It lifted its nose and poke at a fat green pear, sitting in the painted silver bowl near the frame. Then the Grim drew back and lifted one of its front paws, wriggling it strangely, not quite like a handshake. It seemed to be trying to wriggle its toes, something Harry had never seen a dog do before, and then it puts its paw down and nudged at the painted pear again. Then, it looked expectantly at Harry.

 Feeling more than a little bit stupid, Harry awkwardly raised his hand and touched the pear. Then with an approving look from the Grim, he wriggled his fingers experimentally over the painting, feeling very much like he ought not to be touching it at all.

 Paintings and such weren’t supposed to be poked at, in his mind. Aunt Petunia had actually tried to  _ground_ Dudley that time Harry’s cousin had accidentally punched his fist through a painting and she’d get that pinched look if fingerprints ever appeared on her photographs. And Hogwarts paintings were  _especially_ off limits to Harry’s thoughts – some of them screamed like banshees or sobbed uncontrollably if their frames were so much as brushed.

 And then there used to be that  _really_ creepy painting that had made really inappropriate “jokes” towards students. At least, until Angelina Johnson found out, threatened to stab it, and reported to it an  _extremely_ unhappy McGonagall. Harry only found out afterwards and had been fairly certain that McGonagall was going to light that oily git on fire – since she immediately took it down and away, he supposes that it’s possible she did that exactly.

 But the pear didn’t scream. Instead, it began to squirm, chuckling, and before Harry’s eyes, it wriggled and shifted and giggled into a large, green, pear-shaped door handle.

 Harry’s first instinct was not to go inside, even though the Grim was eagerly wagging its tail and looking at him expectantly. He hadn’t had much luck with secret doors in Hogwarts, really. But the delicious smells seemed to be coming from behind the door, Harry’s stomach growled, he was desperately curious, and he thought he probably would have heard something if there was a three-headed dog or a mountain troll behind the door.

 So, Harry pulled the door open warily, and then nearly fell forwards as the Grim butted impatiently at his legs, forcing him inside.

 Once inside, however, he didn’t even notice the click of the door closing behind him. Harry gaped at the room before him, as enormous as the Great Hall above it and almost as high-ceilinged. Except instead of a sky between the rafters, there were enormous wrought-iron windows letting in grey pre-dawn light at the very top, next to massive bronze ventilation grates and chutes, as well as a twisting network of pipes, the largest of which was easily able to accommodate even a basilisk. The rest of the room was lit by blazing torches, and absolutely swamped with the sounds of hissing stovetops and the thick smell of baking bread and frying grease. There were mounds of glistening brass pots and pans heaped around the warm stone walls, towers of shining plates and bowls, high racks of dishes and glasses and cutlery. And at the very end, there were massive, great brick fireplaces and ovens busy at work.

 And that wasn’t even getting started on the four long, wooden tables in the middle of what was without doubt the famous Hogwarts kitchens. Each table was positioned exactly beneath the four House tables above, Harry would bet. By the setting of the table and beginnings of a Sunday breakfast feast being laden onto it, Harry supposed that this was how meals magically appeared on their counterpart tables above.

 It also wasn’t getting started on the many dozens of creatures scurrying around them, chopping and kneading at other tables and counters, baking and frying, aided by the snap of their tiny fingers and powerful wandless magic. At least a hundred little elves were hard at work throughout the kitchen – they shouted and whistled across the room to one another, passing jars and utensils back and forth, singing and humming and chattering in a happy buzz of busy noise. They were all wearing the same uniform: a tea towel stamped with the Hogwarts crest, tied like togas, besides the plentiful amount of oven mitts and hats here and there.

 “Hello, sir!” an elf squeaked up at him, detaching from the busy throng. “How can we help-” she began, but then… she cut herself off. Her large eyes widened and her floppy ears dropped sharply down as she caught sight of the enormous dog hiding behind Harry’s legs.

 “THE BAD DOG!” she shrieked.

 The effect of her shriek was instantaneous. The nearest elves all shrieked and flailed, flour and sugar went flying, and several elves popped away to reappear hanging from the rafters or on top of racks. Several elves dived under or on top of tables, too, or scrambled up racks and shelves.

 But Harry was most concerned by how the majority of them were suddenly wielding sharp knives or heavy pans – sometimes one in each hand – with an assortment of boiling teakettles and gleaming spatula here and there. All of which looked none the less dangerous because of the tiny fingers and thin wrists holding them. Especially because of the extremely fierce and viciously terrified expressions worn by the armed and battle-ready elves.

 The Grim ducked further behind Harry’s legs and Harry didn’t blame it in the slightest.

 Harry threw out his hands, palms up despite the wand in one of them. “Stop! STOP!” he said desperately, “It’s alright!” His voice sounded panicked and urgent even to his own ears.

 One of the elves seemed to be wielding a gleaming, red-hot poker from the massive ovens, where they were hanging almost above Harry on a ceiling rack. Harry very much hoped that those flowery oven mitts had a very good grip.

 “He’s not going to hurt anybody! It’s alright!”

 “No, sir!” one of the elves squeaked, peeking out from under a gigantic brass pot. “That is the BAD DOG! Tries to come in and scares us! Three times now!”

 “Steals food!” another elf added fiercely, raising their metal spoon like a battle flag.

 “Tracks dirt and mud!”

 “Knocks over pots!”

 “Slurps from pitchers and cups!”

 Many more complaints followed, to which Harry listened with increasing bewilderment and a little bit of bemusement. At least, before he could no longer follow the wave of objections and indignation. He looked down at the Grim hidden behind him, which was looking extremely guilty – the dog’s tail was between its legs, its ears dropped, and it looked up at Harry with a terribly sorrowful and stricken expression.

 “I, uhm, think there’s been a misunderstanding,” Harry said finally, and the wave of complaints trailed off.

 Many elves lowered their makeshift weapons, brows furrowing in confusion.

 “I think he’s just lost,” Harry tried to explain, even though he himself did not properly understand what exactly was happening to him, “and hungry.” The Grim looked up at him hopefully. “And he’s not very good at asking for food because he’s scary-looking… and a dog.”

 At his feet, the Grim snorted softly, but all the elves seemed to be genuinely considering this suggestion. Little by little, they lowered their knives and pans, warily popped down from ceiling rafters and dish racks, and climbed out from under tables and pots.

 “The Bad Dog is not going to bite us?” one of the closer elves asked.

 Harry looked down at the Grim, raising his eyebrows in question and stepping slightly out of its way. The Grim looked back at him, an odd look on its canine face, before it faced the elves and shook its shaggy head in a clear negative gesture. Harry was fairly certain dogs were not supposed to be this intelligent, but the Grim was clearly not a normal dog, much like Hedwig was an extremely brilliant and clever owl.

 Case in point: if Hedwig was staying in Gryffindor Tower overnight, Harry’s gorgeous and genius owl would attack Oliver Wood if the Gryffindor Quidditch captain made an appearance before the sun was up. An extremely groggy Fred had once asked if Harry lent his owl out for others' sleep protection. Harry had told Fred to take it up with Hedwig, because she could make those sorts of decisions for herself.

 “No,” Harry said, a faint smile slipping onto his face. “And he’s  _very sorry_ for scaring you.”

 The Grim nodded eagerly, sitting down and giving the elves its most regretful and adorable look. The adorableness didn’t work very well, since the Grim was big and dark and very scary – and also unwashed and painfully thin on top of that. And the regret was a bit overdone, really, in Harry’s opinion, but the overly dramatic expression seemed to work. It was a dog, after all.

 The elves calmed down even further, many returning to the duties they’d been in the middle of, rescuing fried and baked goods and such. Knives disappeared, pans were shelved, and the dishes set on the long tables were straightened. None of the working elves came anywhere near Harry and the Grim though, giving them both a wide berth, and the nearest elves mostly kept staring cautiously.

 “Is sir  _sure_ that the Bad Dog will not be bad?” one of the elves said worriedly.

  _Not at all. Part of me is convinced I’m still dreaming, actually,_ Harry thought. But instead of saying that aloud to the agitated elves, he said, “Yeah, he’ll be good.”  _The dog better be good,_ Harry thought, with him putting him neck out like this.

 Beside him, the Grim nodded again.

 Harry opened his mouth to say something, but then the Grim’s stomach growled very noisily – a long and loud growl that left the dog looking quite embarrassed. And Harry’s stomach gurgled an echo, reminding him he hadn’t eaten since an early dinner last night and that the kitchen’s many smells were all terribly delicious and appetizing. That was embarrassing too.

 “Could… could we get something to eat,” Harry asked awkwardly. “If it’s not too much trouble?" 

 If Harry had been asked to predict the reaction to that statement, brilliant delight and enthusiasm wouldn’t have been his first guess. Honestly, it wouldn’t even have been his twelfth. Which just went to show, as the elves around them lit up with eager challenge, that Harry was lucky to have his rotten but strangely useful luck.

~

 The elves set up a small table and chair in the corner of the massive room, right next to the door, giving the Grim a wide berth all the while. They trotted out a large silvery tray, laden with a teapot, milk, and sugar, and a cup for Harry, as well as an enormous full breakfast that was far more than Harry thought he could eat.

 Harry made sure to thank the elves profusely, for going to so much trouble for him, and apologizing for disturbing their making of breakfast. They squirmed and beamed delightedly, sometimes flushing to the tips of their large ears and bowing low with squeaky welcomes. Harry knew that making breakfast was hard work and it bothered him greatly that he’d never really considered where breakfast had come from before, just taking it as for granted as the enchanted staircases.

 Next to the small table, the elves left out a large plate of meats on the floor for the Grim. It was a thick pile of bacon and sausages and patties, along with what might have been scrambled eggs, and the platter was immediately gobbled into with gusto. The Grim’s hunger was enough to make Harry feel slightly ill and clearly scared the elves.

 The Grim did slow down after a while, however, and Harry found himself enjoying an oddly wonderful breakfast with the dog by his side. The kitchens were warm and cozy, the food was fantastic, and watching the elves at work was amazing. Harry watched with wonder and fascination as they floated sizzling pans around and popped pasties off trays with snaps of their fingers.

 Making breakfast for the Dursleys would have been so much easier if he’d had some tricks like that.

 “Is Harry Potter enjoying his meal?” an elf who’d introduced herself as Penny squeaked. She was the one who’d greeted him and made a valiant effort not to look at the Grim, keeping herself as far away from the great black dog on the other side of the table as she could.

 Harry made sure to smile reassuringly at her. “Yeah, everything’s great,” he said. “You guys really do all this work, for every meal, every day?”

 “Yes, sir!” Penny beamed. “And the clothes washing and the castle washing and the greens keeping and more! We are always keeping busy, sir!”

 “Wow, that’s a lot,” Harry said, hoping very much that the elves found time for themselves and to eat and rest in between all that work. He felt terribly guilty, not knowing that a majority of what he’d just thought of “magic” turned out to be a lot of hard work. “I never see you guys around.”

 Much to Harry’s confusion, Penny’s beam seemed to become twice as brilliant. Many of the bustling elves around them, whose ears were raised and flicking in a way that was clearly eavesdropping, squeaked and blushed delightedly.

 “Yes! We are very good at not being seen!” Penny said, her eager nodding making her ears flap.

 Harry didn’t know what to make of this, especially because the little elf seemed so very proud of being invisible and unknown. She looked happy, but he felt bewilderingly uncomfortable.

 “Well, I wish I had seen you around,” Harry found himself saying. Then, as Penny’s eyes widened with a sort of horrified expression, he hastened to add, “Because I would have liked to say thank you for all your hard work!”

 Penny stared at him, halfway between confused and wondrous. “Sir?”

 “I love Hogwarts food, it’s the best,” Harry went on, hoping that he was not about to cause some horrible fit or strange punishment. He wondered where Dobby was, actually; he hadn’t seen the elf in months. “I really love your treacle tart, it’s my absolute favourite.”

 A little ways away, a small elf in the middle of placing spoons and eavesdropping squeaked very loudly. The elf stared at Harry, eyes wide and expression stunned, clutching cutlery against their tea towel toga as they slowly turned bright red. Many other elves were staring at this small one, or at Harry like they’d never seen a creature like him before.

 Penny noticed Harry staring and said, “That is Toby, sir. Treacle tart is his special dish.”

 “Oh,” Harry said, then looked at Toby and said as politely and genuinely as he could fit into mere words, “Thanks, Toby. Your treacle tart is fantastic.”

 Toby squeaked again, his face turning near tomato-red all the way to the ends of his ears. He opened his mouth to try and say something, it seemed, but no words came out. And the elf instead turned away, crawled under a table, and then into the nearest pot. Nobody stopped him. Toby closed the pot’s lid on top of himself, disappearing from sight, and stayed there.

 Harry looked uncertainly towards Penny. “…Did I say something wrong?”

 “Oh, no, Harry Potter, sir,” Penny reassured him, her large brown eyes glistening with what looked to be tears. Harry watched, frightened and uncertain, as she sniffled. “Harry Potter is a very nice wizard. Very, very nice wizard. To thank house elves and feed the Bad Dog.”

 Harry looked down at said Bad Dog. The Grim had licked its platter completely clean of any trace of food, and was now staring up at Harry with clear amusement. Its expressions weren’t quite human, but Harry would eat the teacup and saucer in his hand if the Grim didn’t think his poor navigation of the Hogwarts elves was funny.

 “Uhm, okay,” Harry said awkwardly. “Thanks?”

 Penny made a squeak of surprise, then sniffled and hiccupped. “Harry Potter is very welcome,” she said very sincerely, and then she scurried off into the throng of busy elves without another word. Harry soon lost sight of her, among everything, and he hoped that she hadn’t tried to crawl into a pot like Toby.

 Harry looked down at the Grim again. “This  _isn’t_ funny,” he whispered.

 The Grim just snorted at him. Then the monstrous omen of death lay down and rolled over on its back again, scratching and happily stretching against the stone floor. It looked very content in that moment – very comfortable. Warm and well-fed and… still in desperate need of a wash… but happy.

 “Is sir done with his meal?” a new elf asked, this one old and male.

 “Oh, uhm, yeah, thanks,” Harry said, and did not so much sit back as he did throw himself out of the way as the house elves descended and whisked away the silver tray. Within seconds, the Grim’s platter had been floated away, the table had vanished with a loud  _pop_ sound, and the chair followed suit as soon as Harry stood, with another shattering  _pop._

 It was so quick that Harry was quite surprised that he hadn’t been vanished as well, into whatever pocket dimension elves so efficiently sent tables and chairs and such. Then he looked down at the Grim. The Grim seemed even more surprised than him, at the loud  _pop_ sounds, and had instantly flipped back onto its feet. This would have been fine if not how… startled was probably the far better word, meant in a more violent sort of way... how startled it was. The great black beast had its matted hackles raised and teeth hintingly bared – its eyes were a little wide and wild.

 But… oddly enough… not towards Harry. If it had backed itself into the corner of the room and been facing him, Harry would have been terrified, but that wasn’t what had happened. No, the Grim was standing partly  _in front_ of Harry, actually – a little to the side but very solidly between Harry and the rest of the room – like some dangerous, protective, living wall. The odd situation brought up an equally odd sensation in Harry, one that he could not have named, before he noticed the elves again.

 Many of the nearby elves backed away correspondingly. They kept their eyes on the Grim, their ears down, and reached for nearby sharp cutlery and other makeshift kitchen weapons. It looked to be the beginnings of some kind of standoff, or perhaps a slow-motion recreation of their entrance to the kitchen, and Harry quickly decided that they had better not overstay their welcome.

 “I think we had best be going,” Harry said quietly, looking down at the startled dog. “Uhm…”

 He did not know how to get through to the Grim. He wanted to calm it somehow, to reassure it that everything was fine, or to communicate their leaving, but he just didn’t know how. Even its earlier lolling expressions and apparent friendliness were not enough to make Harry forget now that the Grim was an enormous, strange, filthy, dangerous animal that might bite his hand off it he tried to touch it or maybe moved too quickly.

 But… the Grim’s standing in front of him… that reminded Harry of the dog’s lolling expressions and friendly patience in showing him it didn’t mean any harm. Harry couldn’t forget the dog’s eerie intelligence, leading him down to the kitchens and showing him how to get in. The Grim might have been an animal, but it definitely wasn’t a normal one.

“…Hey,” Harry said softly, nervously. “It’s alright. It’s okay. We’re just leaving now, alright?”

The Grim’s ears twitched, then cocked towards Harry.

 “They were just clearing the tables and stuff. We’re going, right? It’s fine.”

The Grim looked towards Harry now, and Harry noticed that its eyes were strikingly grey and terribly uncertain. It seemed, for a moment, not to know where exactly it was or what exactly it was looking at. As it and Harry stared at each other, however, everything about it seemed to soften – its hackles lowered, its posture relaxed, and its striking grey eyes went warm and sorry.

“It’s alright,” Harry repeated, gently reached out to pat the dog’s slumped shoulders. “It’s alright. That was loud, wasn’t it? It’s alright.” Harry didn’t really know what he was saying, or which of them he was saying it to, but it felt relieving to run a hand over the Grim’s back. “You’re alright; you’re fine. We’re just going to go now, alright?”

 It took a long moment, but the Grim’s tail wagged once, then twice, and then the great black dog looked away. The Grim led their way out of the kitchen, slinking out under the watchful eyes of the scared elves to nudge the door open. Harry followed, giving the elves his best sorry grimace and a self-conscious attempt at a wave.

 One of the elves echoed his awkward goodbye, though, so… there was that.

 Then they were back in the warm hallway of paintings, only this time stuck in an uncertain quiet as the fruit bowl frame clicked shut behind them. Harry watched the green pear doorknob sink back into the surface of the painting, going still and lifeless, and then looked towards the similarly still Grim standing in the middle of the corridor. It looked unhappy - with itself – ashamed.

 “Hey,” Harry said. “It’s alright. That stuff… just… happens sometimes.”

 He would know.

 “Everybody has… bad days,” Harry said awkwardly.

 Sometimes, Harry couldn’t go near the third floor corridor, on the right hand side, without remembering a whole host of things that made him feel empty on the inside and shaky on the outside. Sometimes, he couldn’t close his eyes without seeing skin just… crumbling under his hands… breaking apart at his touch and the flesh turning grey before running over his fingers like sand. On bad nights, even years later, his nightmares were filled with dying screams, empty robes hitting the floor, angry red eyes rising in a curl of black smoke that swooped towards him, and fangs dripping with silvery blood coming towards him as he tripped over a maze of the Dark Forest’s roots. His nightmares were filled with chess pieces with stone eyes and sharp swords, red hair hitting the ground among chunks of stone, a girl sipping from a bottle that turned out to be poison, and a pain so striking in his forehead that he had to blink green light out of his eyes when he scared himself awake.

 The Grim tilted its head and trotted over to him, just as Harry crouched down and raised a hand to scratch at its ears. Maybe he was seeing things now, but… there really was something soft and warm in the Grim’s striking grey eyes. Something that looked like understanding, even though Harry had never ever dared to share his bad days with anyone – Ron and Hermione didn’t seem to have bad days, not beyond being a little tense or avoiding a certain girls washrooms, and Harry didn’t want to ruin the happy air at Hogwarts with his inability to forget things long past.

 “It’s alright,” Harry found himself repeating, as the Grim moved closer and leaned some of its bulk against him. The dog was very warm, he found, and the gesture felt almost like being wrapped up in Mrs. Weasley’s strong arms as he stepped inside the Burrow.

 He’d like to go back to the Burrow… just for a time. Just to get away from the heavy miasma that surrounded the borders of the school nowadays, the one that edged at the back of his mind during Quidditch practice sometimes or during Care of Magical Creatures class. The last incident with the dementors had left him shaky for days, with nightmares for weeks, and… well… the frequency of his bad nights seemed to be increasing.

 Harry didn’t like dreaming of tiny dragons snapping off his fingers, or of six gleaming yellow eyes from three heads surrounding him, covering him in a hot, foul breath. Nor of Bludgers smashing into heads and him tumbling from his broomstick, legs swinging in the empty air while sweaty fingers clung desperately before slipping… and then he was falling fast towards the hard, green ground. 

 Hogwarts was made of golden laughter and clear skies and happy moments of wonder at the magic of his fingertips, and… sometimes all he could think of were flying keys biting off his skin or thick vines swallowing him alive in the dark.

 And worse than the bad days, as impossible as that seemed, were the sad days. Worst of all, most of all, Harry found himself dreaming of soft smiles and gentle welcoming from a man and a woman who looked at him with knowing and love. But they were locked behind a blue glass, which so kindly and cruelly showed him a world – his heart’s  _deepest and most desperate desire_ – that would never be.

 A sudden touch broke Harry out of his painful thoughts – it was against his neck and very odd. The Grim had pressed its nose against the skin of his neck. Perhaps it was a sign of affection or reassurance, but whatever the intent, the impact was cold and slimy and thoroughly unpleasant, all wrapped up in a small, awful touch approximately the size of a large button.

 Harry shuddered and removed himself from the nose immediately, rubbing his free hand over his neck to try and rid himself from the feeling of chilled liver on his skin. It didn't work. Harry looked suspiciously towards the Grim, which was now sitting in front of him with its tongue lolling out in the perfect picture of innocence. It didn't work; Harry was not fooled.

 Harry sat on the ground at well, giving his aching legs a break. “So, I fed you,” he told the Grim, still eyeing it with suspicion. “Does this mean you’re going to stop haunting me? Because honestly, I get enough of death omens in Divination class with Professor Trelawney.”

 The Grim tilted its head, tongue still lolling out.

 “According to the tea leaves in the vague shape of a dog, I'm gonna die,” Harry informed it, to which it snorted. “Yeah. Seamus thought it looked more like a donkey, though. So, yeah, I dunno.”

The Grim looked offended now, very much so. Harry could not fathom why.

 “Professor McGonagall said that it happens every year, though,” he continued, “and that I’m not going to be let off homework, but, on the plus side, she said that if I do die, I don’t have to hand it in.”

 That got another snort from the Grim. Harry grinned at it, still scratching its ears.

 “I don’t understand, though,” Harry mused, curious and confused. “What were you doing at the top of the Quidditch stands anyway? How’d you even get up there? That was you, right?”

 He would have thought nothing of a lack of answer, but… the Grim went very still under his hand. Harry paused his petting to look at it, but the dog wouldn’t meet his gaze, and Harry cautiously went back to scratching its neck and ears. He wanted very dearly to ask if this dog had been the one on Privet Drive too, but… that would be ridiculous, wouldn’t it? It didn’t make any sense.

 And it wasn’t as though the Grim could answer him.

 Before he could decide what to do, though, the Grim tensed again, when it had just been beginning to relax. Then before Harry knew what was really happening, the great black dog was on its feet once more and running off down the corridor. Harry tried to call after it, but he was too surprised. By the time he was on his feet, the Grim was already disappearing up the staircase towards the Entrance Hall.

 “…Potter?” someone said in surprise.

 Harry looked behind him at the person who’d happened across him and accidentally chased off the Grim. “Diggory,” he said, equally surprised. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's all just remember that Sirius Black was not a paragon of mental health and good decision-making when we met him over six months later. So if you're wondering, "Why is he behaving this way?" Don't worry. I am going to address why he's behaving the way he is, and I am going to have the characters address his behavior too. Seriously (pun intended), Azkaban is something out of the worst nightmares, the dude cannot be okay right now. 
> 
> Also, Harry is so desensitized to the possibility of a murderer being after him, wtf. This kid is not okay either.


	3. The Hospital Wing Parade

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your support so far! It means a lot to me. 
> 
> A quick note on the last chapter (just something I want to clarify): part of the reason that the house elves were so nice to Harry and touched by his gratitude is because he's the Boy-Who-Lived. Voldemort threatened Hogwarts, their home and livelihood, and he and his followers treat their house elves terribly (see: Voldemort leaving Kreacher to be drowned by Inferi after forcing him to imbibe the Drink of Despair + the Malfoys' and Blacks' treatment of house elves in general); just look at how ready the elves were to break out the knives and start taking out kneecaps after a year of Snape and the Carrows. As the Boy-Who-Lived, Harry is given some credit and associated with the death of Voldemort and the end of the First War, so it's pretty surprising and touching, at first, that "the great and powerful" Harry Potter is just a polite, slightly awkward kid who loves treacle tart and sympathizes with shared experiences. 
> 
> Anyway, this is the last finished chapter of AtP that I've been holding in reserve! Enjoy it while it lasts!

 Cedric Diggory was standing in the middle of the hallway, this time in a casual sweater and slacks, with his gleaming prefect badge pinned to the thin, well-fitting, cabled knit. He was entirely free of mud and rain now. His dark hair looked dry and soft, and colour had returned to his lightly freckled face after a good night of rest.

 Harry felt horribly underdressed in comparison, in his hospital pyjamas and slippers. He hadn’t paid any mind whatsoever to his hair, which was surely misbehaving terribly, both at the restless night and the early hour. Not to mention that his pyjama legs were covered in black fur and dirt from the Grim, and his hands were covered in the same from daring to pet a dog that hadn’t seemed to have a proper bath in weeks if not months. He probably looked like a ridiculous mess at the moment.

 “Er… good morning,” Harry said awkwardly.

 Diggory stared for a moment, then said, “What do you mean?”

 “Uh,” Harry began.

 “Do you wish me a good morning or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?”

 Harry blinked. “Um… what?”

 Diggory’s face fell slightly. “It’s, um, from a book,” he said, before he collected a smile that didn’t seem quite all there. His cheeks were a little pink, Harry noticed. “Never mind. What are you doing out of the hospital wing?”

 Harry opened his mouth to explain the situation, but… he did not have the words. How did one explain getting an early morning visit from an oddly intelligent dog, which heavily resembled the Grim and may have been haunting him for months, and being led down to the kitchens to eat breakfast together? He did not know – which was not good, he realized, as he was going to have to explain himself to Madam Pomfrey.

 Oh, Merlin, he had completely forgotten about Madam Pomfrey.

 “Don’t worry, I’ve seen stranger things than someone hanging around outside the kitchen with a dog, if that’s your worry,” Diggory said, grinning with good humour and reassurance. “Was that your dog? If it was, I’m obligated to tell you that students aren’t allowed to keep dogs at Hogwarts without permission from their Head of House. And that I’m impressed you’ve managed to hide a dog that large this long.”

 “Uhm, no,” Harry said. “It’s not my dog. I think he’s a stray, actually.”

 Diggory’s brows furrowed slightly. “Really? I’ve seen a few stray cats about the castle, but never a dog before.” He appeared to think it over a few seconds more before he shrugged. “Maybe he’s from Hogsmeade… or maybe even wandered in through the Forbidden Forest.”

 “Maybe,” Harry agreed, although he didn’t like the idea of the Grim in the Forbidden Forest.

 It was a large dog, yeah, but people said there were things like werewolves in there. And Harry knew first-hand that there were an awful lot of large Acromantula in there too, who’d been happy enough to eat a couple of second-year Hogwarts students. Aragog would probably even eat Fang if given the chance, so some random stray dog didn’t stand much of a chance.

 Diggory’s sudden yawn interrupted Harry’s thought. “Oh, excuse me,” he said from behind his hand. “My friend’s not feeling well, so I said I’d take her prefect rounds this morning.”

 Harry wanted to point out that Diggory had just played a Quidditch match yesterday, and had a run in with dementors too, so it wasn’t very fair to drag him out of bed this early on a Sunday morning. But he also didn’t want to point out obvious things that Diggory definitely already knew.

 “How about I grab a mug of hot chocolate and walk you back to the hospital wing?” Diggory suggested, smiling with an earnestness that made Harry’s heart flop strangely and unreasonably in his chest again. “Sorry, Potter, but I doubt that Madam Pomfrey released you this early.”

 “Ah… no,” Harry admittedly awkwardly, a faint burning feeling rising up his neck.

 “Thought so,” Diggory said, his nose wrinkling with his grin. He didn’t look disappointed or disapproving or victorious, just amused as he moved towards the fruit bowl painting and started tickling the green pear. He took the half-formed doorknob in hand without looking, with the familiarly of someone who’d done it many times before. “Come on. Can I get you a cuppa for the walk?”

 “Um, no, thank you,” Harry said. “I’ve already eaten.”

 Diggory peered at him, opening the kitchen door. “How early did you get  _up,_ Potter?” he wondered, with something very akin to bewildered horror on his face.

 Harry didn’t actually know, so he shrugged.

 “Well then,” Diggory said. “That’s… terrifying. I’ll just be grabbing my cuppa now, if you don’t mind. Please don’t run. It’s far too early in the morning to run after you.”

 “Somebody should tell that to Wood,” Harry said, because it seemed late enough for an early Quidditch practice by now. After they’d lost, the reminder of which sent a pang through Harry’s chest, it probably wouldn’t be long before Oliver Wood demanded that they start practice before dawn. Every day.

 Diggory paused, the kitchen door still open in front of him. Then he looked at Harry with another expression of bewildered horror, before managing to say, “My complete condolences, Potter… I’d say more, of course, but… wow, I am just so glad that is not me and I get to set the time of my own Quidditch practices.”

 Harry snorted. “Thanks, I think.”

 “I’ll report him for pure evil to McGonagall or Sprout if it helps you,” Diggory offered, seeming rather sincerely concerned.

 Harry burst out laughing. That sounded ridiculous, but it was probably better that Oliver Wood ending up dead because an overtired Angelina had had enough and pushed him off his broom. Or because an overtired George whacked their captain with a beater’s bat by “accident” a little too hard. Or because Harry himself just lost it and shoved the Snitch down Wood’s shouting hole.

 Diggory grinned. “One moment, Potter.”

 As Harry stifled laughter, Diggory disappeared inside the kitchen and quickly returned with two mugs full of hot chocolate. Despite Harry’s protests, Diggory forced one on him with the argument that maybe Madam Pomfrey wouldn’t maim him for vanishing on her if he’d done something under Healer’s orders. Besides, the Hogwarts hot chocolate was just  _amazing._

 “So,” Diggory said as they set off down the hall, “I’m afraid I haven’t got your Hogsmeade chocolate yet. Sorry about that. I wasn’t really expecting to happen across you so soon.”

 Harry, in the middle of taking a sip of the hot chocolate, felt his face heat up suddenly. He blamed the hot chocolate. Or maybe the stairs; it was probably the stairs making him feel out of breath like this.

 “Oh, no, it’s fine. Really, you never had to. You  _don’t_ have to.”

 “I know,” Diggory said, also a little pinked from the hot chocolate. “But I said I would, didn’t I? I don’t want to be the sort of bloke who breaks his word that easily.”

 “Oh, well…” Harry didn’t know what to say to that. He didn’t want Diggory to feel obliged to get him anything, especially as a pity gift because Harry had lost a Quidditch game because of some horrible dementors. But if  _pride_ was involved, then he might insult Diggory by continually refusing.

 Diggory gave him a weak, awkward sort of smile. “Look, how about we make a deal?”

 “A deal?” Harry repeated, as they reached the top of the stairs.

 “Mmhmm. You accept the chocolate and the next time you beat me to the Snitch, which I’m sure will happen when we play a fair game, you can get  _me_ some Honeydukes chocolate. Alright?”

 Harry squinted at the older boy, feeling confused. “Gryffindor won’t play Hufflepuff until next year,” he pointed out. “And you don’t know who’ll win.”

 “I’m pretty sure I do,” Diggory said, smiling rather ruefully.

 “I’m pretty sure you don’t. Unless you’re taking Divination or something?”

 The Hufflepuff captain laughed, which made Harry’s chest start those dumb flopping feelings again. So what if Diggory was humble or trying to be modest or something? It wasn’t admirable, it was annoying. Diggory was a pretty good Seeker and might well be able to beat him in a match. Oliver would probably try to disown Harry if it happened, but it could happen.

 “Well, since I graduate the year after next, I guess that means you’ll only have two chances to beat me,” Diggory said, grinning. “Unless someone plans out some pick-up games or something again. Sounds fair to me if you’re up for the challenge.”

 “I dunno,” Harry said, forcing down an answering grin. “What’s the catch?”

 “The catch is that we’ve been talking about chocolate so much that I just really want chocolate now,” Diggory answered honestly, a wide grin overtaking his face. “You’ve caught on to my nefarious and dastardly scheme for chocolate, Potter. I’ve been unmasked. Foiled. Caught in my own web-”

 Harry, by this point, was laughing too hard to pay any more attention. “Fine! Alright, fine!”

 “Oh good, it’s worked. Victory at last. Mwahaha.”

 It was all said in complete deadpan. Harry stopped to lean against the castle way, so he could wheeze with laughter without falling over. Diggory stood by and waited, taking casual sips of hot chocolate and looking terribly pleased with himself, grinning uncontrollably. The jealous part of Harry was severely unhappy about this, but it couldn’t get much of a word in between Harry’s laughter and the nervous flopping in his chest.

 “You’re… a bit weird, Diggory,” Harry said laughingly, before he could help himself.

 Diggory just grinned at him, freckled nose crinkled. “Thanks… I think.”

 Belatedly, Harry realized that maybe that was an insulting thing to say and briefly panicked over how to take it back, but Diggory was smiling at him and he was smiling back. There didn’t seem to be a problem after all. Diggory didn’t look offended in the least and Harry relaxed.

 It wasn’t much longer before they ended up in front of the hospital wing’s doors. They stopped there, because Harry didn’t much want to face the wrath of Madam Pomfrey and Diggory looked like he’d rather leap out a window than face her wrath  _again._ For a long moment, they both waited for the other one to open the door first. Then Diggory took a decided step back and Harry gave him a disapproving look.

 “I’m not in Gryffindor for a reason, Potter,” Diggory said, rather shamelessly. The older boy took a sip of his hot chocolate, took another step back, and nodded towards the door. “You’re the one who snuck out this early; you’re the one who has to face the consequences. Fair is fair.”

 “She’s not  _that_ scary,” Harry pointed out, feeling somewhere between amused and exasperated.

 And then he actually realized that he was right. Madam Pomfrey really wasn’t that scary, she just cared about the well-being of her patients and he wouldn’t get in that much trouble, if any. There really wasn’t a good reason for him to be shuffling in his slippers outside the door, especially when she was probably really worried about where he was.

 Harry reached out and opened the door, then turned to Diggory and smiled. “See you later, Diggory,” he said sincerely. It’d been a really nice, if really odd, morning so far.

 “…Yep, see you around, Potter,” Diggory agreed. “Best of luck. I still think you need it.”

 Harry laughed. “Thanks.”

 Diggory turned to leave, waving over his shoulder, and Harry stepped inside the hospital wing to face the consequences of following strange dogs around the castle. He winced at the nearly deafening demand to know where he’d been at this hour and briefly thought that Gryffindorish bravery was a bit overrated. It might’ve been nice to be a Hufflepuff.

~

 Madam Pomfrey was definitely not happy with him for sneaking off in the wee hours of the morning. In fact she was furious, and had nearly alerted the entire castle that Harry had been kidnapped! Her tirade was brief but fearsome, but quickly deflated as Harry apologized profusely and promised that he wouldn’t do it again. The mug of hot chocolate in his hand also helped placate her, especially as he let her think that he had stepped outside for only a moment to meet with Diggory.

 She quickly sent him through a morning routine, including a blissfully hot shower and a change of clothes, and ushered him back to his bed. She had suspiciously accepted that he’d already eaten breakfast, but left him with a tray of things to snack on anyway and practically dropped a pile of books on him in an effort to keep him put. He was to be  _resting,_ after all, she said insistently, not gallivanting about with nice Hufflepuff boys, no matter how good-looking!

  Harry, for reasons that he did not understand, felt his face go bright red. It stayed that way for a full half-an-hour, much to the apparent amusement of Madam Pomfrey. What did Diggory being good-looking have to do with anything? How was that relevant?

 Too embarrassed to put up a fight, Harry obediently settled in for a restful Sunday. He reopened the  _Magical Creatures Almanac_ and sat back to read it more thoroughly. He distracted himself with the frustration that they probably could have been studying a lot of these incredibly interesting creatures in Care right now, if Malfoy hadn’t been such a fantastic prat to Buckbeak and Malfoy’s father wasn’t such a fantastic prat in general.

 Not long after the hospital wing’s grandfather clock – which sounded more like a grandmother, if you asked Harry, with how gentle it tolled – announced that visiting hours had started, two familiar faces popped around the doorway. Ron and Hermione came in, with Ron still eating breakfast in the form of a small stack of pancakes in his hand. He offered some to Harry and they were very good. Hermione sniffed at them both and helped herself to some of the uneaten fruit on Harry’s snack tray.

 “You are  _so_ lucky that you spent the night here, mate,” Ron informed him tiredly. “I think I could hear Wood shouting all the way in our dorm, last night. Percy even came to our dorm to ask if he could borrow your bed. Don’t worry, though, I told him to fuck off.”

 “Thanks?” Harry said, even though he didn’t think he’d mind. He liked Percy well enough and he wouldn’t want to be stuck in that dorm room either.

 “I don’t understand what all the fuss is about, it’s just one match,” Hermione said. It was a terrible thing to say, but at least she hadn’t said,  _it’s just Quidditch,_ again. It was  _never_ just Quidditch.  “You still have a shot of winning the Quidditch Cup, don’t you?”

 “Yeah, if Gryffindor beats Ravenclaw and then Hufflepuff miraculously manages to win or somehow not lose horribly against them,” Ron said hopefully. “Then if Slytherin does alright but then Gryffindor  _flattens_ them in the last match of the season.”

 “Not going to be doing much flattening without a broom though,” Harry said gloomily. He’d forgotten about it for a while, but now that his broken broomstick was back in sight at the end of his bed… he was remembering just how much the loss of it ached. He’d never replace it, not really.

 Ron and Hermione exchanged a look that Harry couldn’t read. It looked complicated.

 “It was a damn fine broomstick,” Ron said finally.

 “Yeah,” Harry agreed.

 “Have either of you thought about that Defence essay on werewolves yet?” Hermione said, changing the subject. She frowned as Ron groaned loudly.

 “Hermione,” Harry said disbelievingly, “I’ve been in the  _hospital wing._ ”

 “Yes, but you could still  _think_ about it. It’s due tomorrow, after all. I’ve already fully finished my rough draft.” By this, Harry assumed she was essentially done; Hermione’s rough drafts tended to look better than Harry’s  _finished_ essays. “You don’t have very much time to work on it.”

 “Good, because I’m not working on it,” Ron said. “Snape’s a substitute, he can’t set homework like that.”

 “He’s a  _teacher,_ Ron. Of course he can.”

 “Yeah, but he’s actually gonna grade twenty extra essays? Professor Lupin won’t want to do that either. Snape can just give me a T because there’s no fucking way Lupin’s going to make us do them.”

 Hermione, who had apparently already done hers, appeared vaguely distressed at this. She turned to Harry for backup, eyes beseeching, and Harry stared beseechingly right back, silently asking that she not bring him into this. When her stare didn’t let up, he sighed.

 “I’m not gonna write an essay in the  _hospital_ wing,” Harry said firmly. “If we do have to write the essay, then I’ll just ask for an extension.” He’d done all his  _reasonable_ weekend homework on Friday night and Saturday morning, to try and distract himself from Quidditch nerves. “A single weekend to write an unplanned  _two parchment rolls_  essay is batty, anyway.”

 “’Xactly,” Ron said, nodding. “I’ll ask for an extension too.”

 Hermione’s eyes narrowed. “ _You_ aren’t stuck in the hospital wing. What’s your excuse?”

 “Excuse you, I  _am_ stuck in the hospital wing. What with my best mate Harry stuck here. I’m his  _moral support_ and I am  _extremely_ distressed by his accident,” Ron said, rather dramatically. “I’m way too emotionally unstable to write an essay two bloody rolls of parchment long right now.”

 Harry laughed and Ron, grinning widely, added, “In fact, I don’t think I’ll be stable again ‘til next week.”

 “You’re terrible,” Hermione said, but she was smiling and she looked fond.

 “Eh,” Ron said, obviously terribly concerned about this. “So… if you’re done your essay… learn anything neat? Oh, come on, I’m not asking to copy the thing. It’s just that werewolves are some pretty damn  _big_ Dark creatures; there’s gotta be something wicked you found out.”

 “Well… honestly, I’m pretty sure anything  _wicked_ is actually wrong,” Hermione said, looking around for the bookbag she didn’t have. “Harry, is that the  _Magical Creatures Almanac?_ Can I borrow it?”

 Harry handed over his book and Hermione immediately flipped it open to the W section, then placed it on Harry’s lap so they could all lean over it. There was a long bit of text on one page and on the other a rather grotesque print of an ugly, anatomically inaccurate wolf tearing an ugly, anatomically inaccurate wizard’s intestines out. The wizard appeared rather unbothered by his being eaten, or maybe just bored.

 “See, all the books say that werewolves are really dangerous and bloodthirsty, but… well… they also say that werewolves are just normal witches and wizards cursed to turn into a monster on the full moon,” Hermione explains, looking increasingly frustrated. “You can figure out if someone’s a werewolf if you look for the right clues. I just… surely a perfectly lovely person doesn’t immediately become evil if they’re bitten by a werewolf! That doesn’t make any sense!”

 He hadn’t really paid much attention to Snape’s lecture on Thursday, so Harry frowned as he tried to remember what he knew about werewolves. Unfortunately, it wasn’t much.

 “Surely all werewolves cannot be bloodthirsty and evil!” Hermione was saying. “Like… like… Ron!”

 “…What,” Ron said warily.

 “You wouldn’t suddenly become an awful, man-eating monster if  _you_ were bitten by a werewolf, would you?” Hermione demanded, her eyes beseeching again. “Just because you suddenly had an illness that forced you to be a wolf once a month, you wouldn’t start… eating children or anything!”

 “Fuck, no!” Ron said, looking startled. “I’d never do anything like that! What the hell?”

 “Exactly! What would you do?”

 Ron looked between his two friends, obviously bewildered. Harry had turned to Ron, curious to hear the answer, and with the determined look on Hermione’s face, they likely made for a rather pressing joint stare on their unsuspecting and confused friend.

 “I don’t know, probably lock myself up on full moon so I didn’t hurt anybody?” 

 Hermione’s expression turned triumphant, her eyes practically gleaming. “So why does everybody think they’re these awful Dark creatures? If it’s an illness, one that many innocent people cannot help having, why isn’t it treated like one? Did you know that I skimmed through  _every_ werewolf related book in the library and couldn’t find  _anything_ about werewolves actually written  _by_ a werewolf?”

 “Really?” Harry asked, intrigued.

 “Yes! If they’re perfectly normal witches and wizards most of the time, why can’t someone actually  _ask_ a werewolf about whether or not they have urges to drink blood and eat people and… and… whatever! I don’t think half of these authors know  _anything_ about lycanthropy!”

 “I’m not a werewolf, though,” Ron said quietly.

 “I know, mate,” Harry whispered, patting Ron’s hand as Hermione took in a deep breath.

 “So I wrote the essay on what Professor Snape said: on the ways to recognize and kill werewolves, but…” And she said this next part like it was an especially shameful secret. “I don’t think that it’s right. I mean, people don’t seem to like werewolves very much… so…”

 “Yeah, I wouldn’t want people knowing if I was a werewolf,” Ron said thoughtfully. “I think there was some huge scandal last year, actually.”

 “Yeah?”

 “Yeah. Some pureblood bigwig’s… sister-in-law? Turned out she was bitten and had been a werewolf for over a year,” Ron said, brows furrowed and eyes staring up as he tried to remember. “She just locked herself up on full moon or something. Worked pretty well until she tried to get help, I think, then she was thrown out of the house.”

 “That’s horrible!” Hermione gasped.

 Harry nodded in agreement and subtle closed the book. The grotesque drawing was starting to make him feel a bit ill, actually, with this thread of conversation.

 “Where is she now?” Harry asked, concerned. He’d sometimes considered what he’d do if the Dursleys threw him out or he was actually allowed to run away, but he still wasn’t sure what he would do. He had the Weasleys and a vault of inheritance, but not everyone was so lucky.

 Ron shrugged. “Dunno where she is now, but I doubt anyone blamed her brother-in-law for immediately tossing her out on her ear,” he said, then grimaced as he added quietly, “A lot of people said he should have killed her.”

 “They what?” Harry demanded, horrified.

 “His own sister-in-law? For what? That’s  _barbaric!_ Why?”

 “Well, people don’t like werewolves, right? I mean, there’s always some nutter writing in to the Prophet editorials about the need to kill all werewolves and eliminate the illness completely,” Ron said, looking embarrassed and ashamed and disgusted. “She was apparently the one who was looking after his kid, too. People sort of lost it at that, after werewolves like Fenrir Greyback and his type and all.”

 “Who’s Fenrir Greyback?” Harry asked quietly.

 “A really infamous werewolf who served You-Know-You during the war – wanted to bite as many people as possible and take over the world. Massive nutter, really.” Ron was silent for a moment, then admitted very quietly, “Mum and Dad were terrified he’d be sent to attack our family actually, says Bill, because Greyback liked to bite children best.”

 “What happened to him?”

 “Disappeared after the war, along with most of his followers. Suspected attacks pop up every couple years, but no one really knows,” Ron said, shrugging again. “He’s a bit of a bogeyman now, you know. ‘Be good or Greyback will come and bite you.’ That sort of thing.”

 “And people just… judge all werewolves like him?” Hermione said, sounding at once disdainful and horrified. “All werewolves can’t be monsters just because of one bad apple!”

 “Well… it’s not just one, right?” Ron protested. “Werewolves are seriously dangerous!”

 “I’m not saying they’re not when it’s the full moon! But they’re just normal people for the next month, aren’t they?” Hermione crossed her arms and lifted her chin, and by the jut of it, Harry knew that they were not going to be letting this go for a long while. “There’s got to be a better way to stop lycanthropy than killing a bunch of innocent people!”

 “I didn’t say that!”

 “I didn’t say that you did!” Hermione snapped, before she suddenly sat back and took a deep breath. “Oh, dash it all,” she muttered, and put her head in her hands on Harry’s beside.

 Harry exchanged a concerned look with Ron, who looked very regretful about raising his voice.

 “Hermione, are you alright?” Harry asked.

 Hermione sniffed, before saying into the blankets, “No. I’m just… I’m just tired… and  _sick_ of not being able to trust  _books_ supposedly written by experts and professionals. How can they keep on being  _wrong?_ ” She sat up, rubbing reddened and watery eyes. “I’m just… I might… I might have just written an essay on how to k-kill perfectly innocent people who aren’t getting the help they need for a v-very serious illness. Did… did you know that almost all the books say you should kill a werewolf while they’re h-h-human and… and… unsuspecting?”

 She was crying now, outright, so Harry tossed aside the grotesque book completely and reached out to bring her into a hug. Ron quickly came around the bedside so that he could rub comforting circles into Hermione’s shaking back. They stayed like that for several minutes.

 “All werewolves can’t be monsters,” Hermione said finally, when she pulled away. The statement, however, wasn’t made with the steady confidence that Harry best knew from his friend, but instead with a shaky uncertainty and fragile hope that did not suit Hermione Granger at all.

 “Definitely not,” Ron agreed immediately. “You’re right, it’s gotta just be a few bad apples, right?”

 “Right,” Harry said firmly. “Those experts don’t know what they’re talking about.”

 “There’s gotta be some better books out there. Ones that aren’t full of scared dragonshit.”

 “Maybe one written by an actual werewolf,” Harry suggested.

 “Yeah,” Ron said. “Snape’s not an actual Defence teacher anyway; he doesn’t know anything.”

 “We weren’t even supposed to be  _learning_ about werewolves that day. Maybe Snape made up the whole lesson,” Harry said. “Remember? You said so. We were supposed to be doing hinkypunks that day, not werewolves.”

 Ron nodded. “Snape probably pulled a random lesson out of the worst book he could find, just to fuck with Professor Lupin’s real lesson. Everybody knows he’s bitter he didn’t get the job.”

 Hermione, who had been rubbing at her eyes and nodding up until that point, froze suddenly.

 “He really ought to stick with potions-”

 “What did you say?”

 It was now Ron’s turn to freeze. “What?”

 “You just suggested that Professor Snape set the werewolf lesson… to… mess with Professor Lupin.”

 “Well, yeah. I mean, that sounds like something that git would do. Right, Harry?”

 “Probably,” Harry said, shrugging. He thought back on things, to all the hateful glares and disgusted sneers that Snape sent Lupin every time they crossed, and decided it was probably incredible that Snape hadn’t done something worse. “He does really seem to hate Professor Lupin, doesn’t he?”

 Ron snorted. “Mate, he hates Lupin more than he hates you and Neville  _combined._ ”

 “I wonder why,” Harry said, because Professor Lupin always acted perfectly cordial towards the man. 

 There was the thing with the boggart, though, which Snape probably did not consider "the best day of my entire life" like Harry sometimes did. Some professors could have taken something like that in stride - Flitwick, for example, or Sprout, or even McGonagall - but Snape wouldn't know good humour if it hexed him up the nose and made bats out of his bogeys. 

 “I just said it, didn’t I? He’s bitter that Lupin has the job he wants.”

 “Yeah,” Harry agreed, “but he didn’t hate Quirrell or Lockhart nearly as much.”

 “He definitely hated them, though.”

 “Yeah, but not as much.”

 “Mate, he would have pushed Lockhart off a cliff if he could,” Ron said flatly, before his brows furrowed and he admitted, “Yeah, not as much, though.”

 Harry laughed, then turned to look at Hermione, who was being oddly silent and still looked very thoughtful. It took a couple seconds for her to notice that both Harry and Ron were staring at her – she blinked at them before she seemed to come back to herself.

 “You alright now?” Ron asked hesitantly.

 “Yes. Yes, I’m fine,” Hermione said. “I was just… thinking.”

 “Uh oh,” Harry said and winced when Hermione smacked him lightly on the arm.

 “I think I’m going to have to find an owl-order catalogue,” she said, still looking rather thoughtful. “I’m going to see if I can find some  _useful_ books on this subject. Books that are  _right_ about things. They have to exist somewhere.”

 She looked quite determined again and Harry felt a rush of relief go through him, because there was the Hermione that he knew. He never knew what to do when anyone cried and he disliked seeing Hermione upset in any way. Harry decided that the whole thing was definitely Snape’s fault, because it was actually really creepy to make them write an essay on how to kill sick people, now that Hermione had made him think properly about it. Even if they were werewolves.

 “That’s the spirit,” Ron said, looking equally relieved. He went to go sit back down.

 Hermione seemed to think for a moment, then asked, “Ron? Do you think you could find that article about that woman you were talking about? I want to learn more about that.”

 “Uh, I don’t think I could. But I bet Mum could. I could write her.”

 “Would you?”

 “Yeah, of course,” Ron said, before moving the conversation towards another subject.

 Harry was very glad to have Ron and Hermione for company, especially since they put so much effort into keeping him distracted from thoughts of dementors and his broken broomstick. He would have been very bored, left alone in the hospital wing. He didn’t know what he would have done without Ron to tell him about the second-years’ Gobstones tournament that had taken a hilarious turn for the disastrous yesterday or Hermione to point out factual inconsistencies she was beginning to notice between textbooks, using the  _Magical Creatures Almanac_ as an example.

 Sometime around brunch, Fred and George burst into the room singing tuneless, clashing well-wishes. Fred was carrying a rather enormous bowl of fruit, which greatly resembled the kitchen’s entrance painting, and George was carrying a massive bouquet of earwiggy plants he identified as flowers, which more closely resembled yellow cabbages. George at first claimed they were a courting gift – a lovely bouquet for an equally lovely Seeker – but soon admitted they were actually from Hagrid, who was busy wrangling several creatures for his classes tomorrow.

 On the heels of the twins came the Gryffindor Chasers, with Alicia and Katie giggling arm in arm as Angelina whispered something to them. Despite yesterday’s loss, all three girls appeared in good spirits and greeted Harry happily. They assured Harry again that they did not blame him for what happened at the match, and that they were all glad he was alright.

 This time the Gryffindor team was accompanied by their captain, who shuffled in last. After getting an elbow to the ribs from Fred for taking too long, Oliver Wood told Harry (in a hollow, dead sort of voice) that he didn’t blame him in the slightest. Harry, who was well-aware that Wood loved Quidditch probably more than life itself, accepted this and asked his captain to have a seat (because it sort of looked as though Wood might fall over).

 “Would you like some fruit?” Harry offered awkwardly.

 “Excellent idea, Harry,” George said, plucking a fruit on Harry’s behalf from the bowl. “Here, Ollie, have a pineapple.” He then dropped a head-sized pineapple onto their team captain’s lap, as though he thought Wood might just pick it up and take a bite.

 Thankfully, Wood did not do that. He just sort of sat there and held onto it, staring at it confusedly. He looked bewildered by its very existence – like he had never seen a pineapple before in his life and wasn’t sure what it was. Beside him, Fred and George looked rather delighted that the universe had conspired to allow them to exist and witness this very moment; Alicia and Katie just stared.

 After several seconds, Angelina cleared her throat and changed the conversation towards substantially less strange reactions to the match. Hufflepuff was, of course, ecstatic to have won, but the presence of the dementors cast a large shadow both over their victory, their sense of sportsmanship, and general school spirit. Gryffindor especially had been largely downcast this morning, but no one blamed Harry for the loss. The dementors were the ones at fault, in the eyes of the school.

 “Well, the eyes of anyone  _reasonable_ in the school,” Alicia amended. Apparently, Slytherin had been largely unbearable, especially the Slytherin team, who were delighted at Gryffindor’s losses and smug that Malfoy’s injury had kept them from playing this weekend like they were supposed to have done. If one asked them now, they’d probably say it had been strategy all along.

 Ravenclaw was better, according to Katie, but the House seemed to assume that they now had a serious shot at the Quidditch Cup and that Gryffindor was going to be out of the running, and were glad of it. They were wrong, of course, but they didn’t know that.

 The Gryffindor team stayed for a while, long enough for Wood to actually talk again. Every one of them seemed to have an opinion on what sort of broom Harry should get to replace his Nimbus, at least until Katie seemed to notice the idea of replacing his beloved broom so soon upset him.

 Katie then very obviously changed the subject towards how to sabotage Slytherin’s chances, which everyone had a lot of opinions on and ideas for. Wood perked up at the idea of giving Flint food poisoning.

 Eventually, the team left to do other things and live their lives. Angelina went to have lunch with her cousin Contence in Hufflepuff, dragging Katie along with her to introduce them. Fred and George checked the time and scampered off to “attend to some very important business”, running away from Ron’s concerned questions with the sole reassurance of: “It’s none of your business, good sir, and barely much business at all!” Then Alicia admitted that she hadn’t done any of her homework yet and left to work on it, pulling the still vaguely spacey captain along with her.

 Once they were alone, Hermione said, “Did you notice that he took the pineapple?”

 Ron snorted. “I don’t think  _he_ noticed that he took the pineapple.”

 Ginny Weasley turned up around lunch, blushing furiously, and presented Harry with a get-well card she had made herself. It was very nicely made and Harry was touched, and then was promptly horrified when he opened it and it sang shrilly at him. He thanked Ginny very sincerely and after she left, turned desperately to Ron and Hermione.

 It took half of Harry’s pile of books and the entire fruit bowl piled on top of it, but eventually the three of them managed to shut it up. Harry felt horribly embarrassed afterwards, his face practically burning with it, because its shrill cheer had even managed to draw Madam Pomfrey’s amused attention. Hermione looked sympathetic, but Ron was grinning widely and wasted  _no time_ in bringing up Lockhart’s horrible Valentines from last year and Harry was then forced to shove a pillow into Ron’s face to get  _him_ to shut up too.

 The stream of well-wishing visitors, intent on cheering him up, continued into the afternoon a little more sparingly. Dean and Seamus dropped by to say hey, with Dean dropping off his own nicely-made get-well card that he had clearly drawn himself (and that Seamus had signed too), but they didn’t stay very long.

 Even Percy came by, his Head Boy badge gleaming on his chest, to check that Harry was alright and to rant a little about how  _outrageous_ it was that the dementors had dared to come on school grounds and approach students. As soon as word reached the parents, Percy insisted, there’d be disaster! It was comforting in its very Percy Weasley sort of way.

 Neville Longbottom showed up just before dinner, looking nervous about being there, and the three of them welcomed him warmly. Harry was glad to see him and assured Ron and Hermione that Neville could keep him company while they ran off to grab something to eat.

 “So what’ve you been up to Neville?” Harry asked, after Ron and Hermone finally left.

 “Herbology Club had a meeting this morning,” Neville answered, eyes brightening at the mere thought of his favourite extracurricular. “We’re going to be planting some Winter Nightlace and Snow Melons next weekend, since it’s finally getting cold enough. Hannah Abbott from Hufflepuff helped bring some from her family's gardens at home.”

 Harry hummed, both with vague interest and vague horror. Somehow he’d managed to forget just how awful Quidditch practices were in winter; charms and enchantments could only do so much sometimes.

 “The kitchen greenhouses are turning out really well this year, too. That new girl? Astoria Greengrass? She really knows what she’s doing. It’s nice having someone just as excited about this stuff,” Neville continued, trailing off as his Herbology excitement dimmed and he seemed to reach the internal point where he thought he’d been talking too long. “How about you, Harry? What have you… oh… um…”

 Neville went bright red, as he obviously suddenly remembered the terrible answer to that nicety.

 “I’ve been reading, mostly,” Harry said, smiling reassuringly at his friend and gesturing at the stack of books on his bedside table. “Talking with Ron and Hermione about stuff. Relaxing. That sort of thing. It’s been sort of nice, actually.”

 Neville was very visibly relieved. “Oh, that’s good.”

 “Yeah.”

 A silence descended between them that was more hesitant than awkward. Neville was wringing his hands in his lap, apparently torn over something he wanted to say. Harry recognized that expression, having seen it time and time again, and patiently waited for Neville to work up the courage to say whatever he wanted to say.

 “I… the dementors,” Neville finally managed.

 “Oh,” Harry said, sure that his heart had just dropped to his stomach. “Um… what about them?”

 Neville looked like he wished he’d never said anything, but he visibly settled himself and asked, “It’s just… are you really alright? They’re…” He trailed off, clearly unable to find the right word to describe the guards of Azkaban prison.

 “I’m really alright, Neville,” Harry assured him.

 “Oh… that’s good,” Neville said again. He looked as though he had more to say, but was still torn on whether or not to spit it out, and instead of speaking, he swallowed the statement and very obviously changed the subject. “So, what’ve you been reading?”

 Though Harry was very curious as to what Neville had wanted to say, he allowed the change of subject and told Neville a little about the  _Magical Creatures Almanac_ and a little of what Hermione had said about werewolves. Perhaps it was the visit to the house elves that inspired him, but Harry was now very curious about it all and was wondering if being a werewolf was anything like being possessed. He would never blame Ginny for what she’d done under the diary’s influence, after all.

 Neville was very clearly frightened of werewolves and he hadn’t done the essay either, but he listened nevertheless and Harry’s half-informed babbling on the subject seemed to provoke some thoughts in him. At Harry’s prodding, Neville told him about occasionally seeing people with lycanthropy in Saint Mungo’s Hospital, and how they seemed like any of the other sick people there. They still frightened him, though, because what if they turned and bit him? His grandmother always told him to stay far away from werewolves.

 “You wouldn’t suddenly want to bite people if you were turned into a werewolf, though, would you?” Harry tried to point out, like Hermione had pointed out to Ron. Unfortunately, this previously argument-winning point didn’t seem to have the same effect here.

 “Well… sometimes sick people don’t really know their own minds,” Neville said quietly.

 He was upset somehow, Harry could tell, deeply, even though he was hiding it well.  

 “Yeah, I suppose,” Harry agreed. Uncomfortable and uncertain how to continue now, he searched his thoughts desperately for a change of subject, something completely unrelated, and said, “So you’ve been to Hogsmeade, right? I never asked you where you went. How was your trip?”

 Neville quickly lit up, talking about Zonko’s and Honeydukes and various other neat shops he’d visited in a group with Dean, Seamus, Pavarti, and Lavender. He was just telling Harry about how Lavender and Pavarti had tried to  _physically drag_ Dean and Seamus into Madam Puddifoot’s – they failed and Dean and Seamus ran away, leaving Neville to accompany the girls inside – when Ron and Hermione came back from supper with a contraband plate of treacle tart hidden up Ron’s sleeve.

 Neville refused Harry’s offer to share, quickly finished his story, and left them. Harry watched him go with a small weight in his chest, feeling like he ought to apologize for something, although he couldn’t tell what no matter how many times he replayed their conversation. Had it been the dementors? Had it been something about werewolves? How often exactly was Neville in Saint Mungo’s hospital? Harry was concerned, especially after remembering that Neville’s Uncle Algie had once reportedly dropped his nephew out a window to prove that Neville was magical.

 Ron and Hermione seemed to notice his dark thoughts and quickly distracted him. They talked about everything, it seemed, from the ridiculousness of their latest Divination lesson to what exactly had happened to Fluffy, Hagrid’s three-headed dog. Hermione was sure that the cerberus had been sent off to an animal preserve, but Ron was equally sure that Fluffy was now roaming the Forbidden Forest with the Weasley family’s wild Ford Anglia.

 That argument didn’t get to finish, because Madam Pomfrey appeared to take away the supper tray she’d left earlier, as well as the treacle tart plate they all forgot to hide. She informed them in no uncertain terms that visiting hours were over and that Harry would be released from the hospital wing in time for breakfast tomorrow morning, in plenty of time for the Monday classes that they  _all_ needed to get their sleep for. Harry and Ron’s most strident groans did not dissuade her; she gently but firmly shooed Harry’s friends from her domain, patiently waiting through their farewells, and set Harry towards getting ready for bed before starting to ready the hospital wing for the night.

 Harry showered, brushed his teeth, changed in pyjamas, and hopped into bed. He opened a book in his lap and tried to read until the lights were turned out, but he kept reading the same lines over and over when he actually managed to look at the page and tried to focus.

 Today had been… today had been a very strange day. Harry’s thoughts were full of all the strange things that had happened to him today, several of which seemed like a dream after so much time. Had he really gone to breakfast in the Hogwarts kitchens with the Grim? Had he really been escorted back to the hospital wing by Diggory?

 Had… had Oliver Wood really accidentally walked off with a pineapple from Harry’s fruit basket? That one, at least, Harry was knew would be confirmed or dismissed by one of his teammates soon enough. Maybe he’d ask Diggory about this morning and the “stray dog”, just to confirm those too.

 He had so many questions. Why did no one say anything about there being  _hundreds_ of house elves working at Hogwarts? Where was Dobby nowadays? What was the truth about werewolves and whether or not they were monsters? What had he said to make Neville look so upset? What had Neville wanted to say earlier? Why did the dementors affect Harry so badly and how could Harry make them  _stop_ so he never had to hear his mother’s dying screams again?

 Even after he’d put the book away, taken his glasses off, and tried to shut his eyes and go to sleep, Harry found himself staring towards the blur of the hospital wing doors. He didn’t know what he was really looking for, since he couldn’t see anything and they were firmly shut, but he stared at them anyway, and he thought and he wondered and he thought.

 When Harry finally drifted off into exhausted sleep, he realized that yet again, there had been no sign of Professor Lupin. It didn’t matter, he told himself blearily, except for how it unreasonably did. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's all that's ready to be shared of AtP! Oh, how this has been fun. The next chapter is about half done, so with luck, I think and hope I'll be back by this time next month. Next time with Remus! _Finally._


	4. The Monstrous Morning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is actually the first half of what became a very long chapter. I will post the second half very shortly.

 Harry dreamed terrible dreams that night. Despite the rather happy and restful day, Harry’s second night in the hospital wing managed to be even worse than the first. Every time he managed to drift away, his sleep was fitful and restless, plagued by nightmares full of his worst memories, which the dementors seemed to have brought to the surface and left to churn in an unkempt mess.

 He was once again haunted by the cold hands and dark hoods of the dementors, by his mother’s dying screams, and by the whole horrible scene of her death given form by his imagination. This time, however, Voldemort looked less like the face on the back of Quirrell’s head and more like an older version of Tom Riddle from the diary, only dressed in Quirrell’s ragged black cloak from the Forbidden Forest in his first year.

 Lily Potter died with a scream and a flash of green light, once again, but as her dark red hair spilled over the floor, it changed. The strewn strands turned brighter, more fire than blood, and suddenly Ginny Weasley’s small and pale body was lying on cold and wet stones.

 The dim green light of the Chamber of Secrets gave a sinister cast to Tom Riddle’s handsome face as he stood over this new corpse, made worse by the smear of silver blood around his lips. The young man made of memories and black magic looked up and glared, black eyes cold and disdainful and furious; his handsome face wearing the ugliest and most hateful expression that a human being could wear.

 Harry’s dreams that night brought him back to many times and things better left forgotten. He dreamed of stone grinding against stone as the statue’s mouth opened, the wet smack of a massive monster against cold stone, and bright yellow eyes following him through the wet darkness. An ancient voice hissed murderous glee into his head as he tripped and stumbled over bones. No matter how fast he ran, no matter how far he fled into dark tunnels, he could not get away.

 Oh, and how the tunnels were filled with their own terrible things. Long, hairy limbs reaching out from all directions, skittering over every surface, and so many beady black eyes staring at him. The skeletal hands and shadowed hoods of dementors, frosting the damp sewers as their dark rags drifted around him in dizzying circles, reaching. A tunnel of light appeared overhead, then winked out as the sinks closed over them and the ceiling rumbled and fell.

 Harry dreamed of stares and whispers and pointing fingers in the corridors, of every spell from his wand conjuring yellow-eyed cobras, of being devoured by the diary that wrote back to him. He dreamed of his arm being smashed apart and then all his bones vanishing, so that his limbs drooped and he fell apart into a puddle of a person. Harry dreamed of headless roosters painting the walls with Tom Marvolo Riddle’s anagram over and over again in their own blood. He dreamed of desperately trying to speak or call out through the darkness but having nothing but hissing leave his lips, and being answered only by the ever-approaching hiss of the hungry basilisk stalking him.

 Harry dreamed terrible dreams that night, and when he startled awake for the last time, sometime just before breakfast, he cursed the very existence of dementors and did his best not to cry with sickness and humiliation. What terrible creatures dementors were! It was not good or fair for something to exist that did nothing but bring suffering and unhappiness and the worst of one’s memories back to the surface. His empty chest welled, bubbled, overflowed, with fear and hurt and incredible pity.

 How could those things ever be permitted to be the guards of a school? How could those things ever even be permitted to be the guards of a prison? And what terrible crimes would a person have to commit to deserve a lifetime of waking nightmares?

 

~

 

 Without much else to do, Harry stayed in bed and pretended to sleep. He was very tired, but his thoughts were too busy to really think or to actually sleep, and so it was preferable to just lie there and not do or be much of anything yet. He occupied himself with failing to clear his mind and thinking about how awfully tired he would be for the rest of the day.

 Madam Pomfrey appeared to wake him at a more reasonable hour of the day, when the sun was finally yawning through the windows of the hospital wing. She could clearly tell that he had not slept well and she made her displeasure clear through glares and grumbles while Harry achingly pulled himself out of bed and through the morning motions – a set of his school robes were set aside and he wondered if they had been brought by a house elf while he got dressed.

 By the time Harry was ready to go, Madam Pomfrey still looked very tempted to keep him in the hospital wing for another day, and the twinge of pain growing in the back of Harry’s skull made him tempted to agree, but she shooed him off to breakfast in the end and he went at least glad to be leaving the scene of his restless nights.

 Breakfast was well underway when Harry walked into the Great Hall and he managed a genuine smile as he joined Gryffindor table once more. Seamus wolf-whistled at his appearance, while Dean smacked his friend and casually asked if Harry was alright before leaving it at that. Angelina even clapped Harry on the shoulder as she walked by with Lee Jordan. The lack of pity made Harry feel better and he smiled reassuringly towards Neville’s worriedly empathetic looks.

 But Harry’s mood took a swift downturn again, unfortunately, no matter how much he tried to grimace through it. Lavender and Parvati showed up and he spent several minutes fending off their concern, before being more or less accosted by Percy for another brief speech on the sheer gall and disgrace of having dementors on school grounds. Then some git in the year above, whose name might have been Cornmac but Harry couldn’t really hear over the pompousness, interrupted to introduce himself as Gryffindor’s future Keeper and reassured Harry that the team under  _his_ leadership would be much better than under Wood’s. Even Percy, who was rarely impressed with his roommate and friend, was appalled beyond words and stared flabbergasted and furiously red-eared at the arrogant boy.

 And  _then,_ since Harry had apparently used up all his luck in life, things got even worse. Draco Malfoy entered the hall with his cronies in tow, almost beside himself with glee at Gryffindor’s defeat. He wasted absolutely no time in forcing practically the entire hall to listen to his scathing commentary of Hufflepuff and Gryffindor’s pathetic performances in the match – especially Gryffindor and  _especially_ Gryffindor’s Seeker.

 Harry had to clench his hands under the table not to go dump a pitcher of hot coffee on Malfoy. He endured silently, teeth gritted, through terrible impressions of dementors and him swooning, as well as taunting questions about his broken Nimbus and other grabs for his attention. He wasn’t the only one; the animosity at Gryffindor table was rising to overboil, and no amount of nervous Herbology stories from Neville, as a poor attempt at distraction, could stop the simmer that had Dean stopping Seamus from trying to set Slytherin table on fire.

 The worst part of it all was that Malfoy had finally taken off the bandages. The “severe” injury from Buckbeak that had prevented Slytherin from playing had apparently disappeared completely over the weekend. Malfoy was apparently celebrating having the full use of both arms again by making his impressions and imitations full-bodied and very spirited.

 Thankfully, Professor McGonagall swooped down from the staff table to ask some nearby Gryffindor seventh-years how their N.E.W.T. studies were going, and Malfoy and company had to shut up or risk detention against the immoveable wall that was Gryffindor’s Head of House. They’d probably be losing points for their behaviour later, anyway, by her expression. Her lips were a thin line of disapproval and Harry sighed in relief at the sight, the growing ache in his head thankfully settling back down into its perpetual but low twinge.

 “Harry!” came Hermione’s relieved voice, followed by familiar hurried footsteps and a second set at an easier pace. “We went to the hospital wing to see you but you were already gone!”

 Harry turned to greet his friends, but Hermione had already reached him by the time he turned to look and he was immediately accosted by her hug. Quick reflexes were the only things keeping Harry from tumbling off the bench and onto the floor with a well-meaning Hermione.   

 “How are you feeling?” Hermione demanded, still squeezing him as though she thought he might disappear on her if she didn’t hold on tight enough. “Are you feeling better?”

 Feeling rather like he’d just taken a hex to the chest, Harry wheezed and awkwardly tried to return the gesture. “I’m fine,” he said, stiffly patting her on the back. It was an uncomfortable but appreciated hug; Harry found himself hoping that he could bury himself in the friendly gesture for the rest of the day and that she’d let go soon before he drowned in her hair or he did something wrong.

 Hermione finally pulled back and frowned at him sceptically. “Are you really?” she said. She slid into the seat on his right side. “Because, excuse me for saying so, but you don’t really  _look_ fine, Harry. You look terrible. Sorry. It’s just that you almost look worse than you did  _before_ you were in the hospital wing.”

 “Merlin, Hermione,” Ron said amusedly, as he sat down on Harry’s other side. “How rude.”

 Harry turned to look at his best mate and watched in concern as Ron immediately choked on the muffin he’d just bitten into. All the Gryffindor third-years watched, actually, as Ron loudly hacked cornmeal onto his plate.

 “Ew,” said Parvati.

 “Fuck, mate, you look like shit,” Ron said, ignoring her. He looked Harry up and down, horrified, and the rest of the table went back to their own breakfasts. “She’s right. Did you even  _sleep_?”

 “Some,” Harry said quietly. “…Not really.”

 Ron reached under the table and put Harry’s book-bag between them. “I brought your bag down for you,” he said, “but seriously, you wanna go back upstairs and sleep? I’ll swear t’all the profs that you’re still sick as a dog in the hospital wing.”

 “Ron!” Hermione hissed, and at first Harry thought it was disapproval, but then she whispered, “Professor McGonagall is  _right there._ ” Her worried look flickered between the teacher not too far down the table and Harry.

 Merlin, Harry really must look awful if Hermione thought he should skip class.

 “She’s talking to Percy,” Ron said, at least a little quieter, glancing over his shoulder, “about  _N.E.W.T._ s. No one can hear shit over that shit.”

 Hermione scowled at Ron’s language and dismissal of such important exams, but she could not deny that Percy Weasley’s alternately insistent and anxious discussion with McGonagall was one that a good portion of the hall could hear. If they listened hard enough and actually cared about exactly how many sentences short answer questions were actually limited to.

 “You might have to show up for fifth period Transfig,” Ron said admittedly. “But Binns won’t give a fuck  _where_ you sleep through his lesson, and Hagrid and Lupin like you. They’d pro’ly let it slide even if you hadn’t scared the shit out of all of us on Saturday.”

 Harry didn’t know about Lupin, honestly, whose mention made Harry’s chest either flop or pang or both. He’d like to think that Professor Lupin liked him like that, but being a good student didn’t make Harry special to his favourite teacher.

 “You can borrow our notes later,” Ron went on. Then he added with a teasing note, “Then I’ll borrow Hermione’s notes off you.”

 “You will  _take your own notes,_ Ronald,” Hermione said frostily. “I’m  _far_ too busy to be doing your work for you.” She gave off an air of certainty and intimidation that McGonagall might have been proud of, before a realization crossed her face and she said worriedly, “But of course you can borrow my notes, Harry, just this once, if you’re not feeling well enough to concentrate today.”

 “You should get some sleep, mate,” Ron said, more seriously. “After… everything.”

 For a moment, Harry was tempted. Curling up into a warm bed and staying there until the world was less awful sounded amazing; closing his eyes and drifting into restful sleep sounded like a dream come true. But… then… he remembered the dreams that hadn’t let him get any sleep.

 He didn’t think he could bear to try to sleep again right now.

 “No,” Harry said, stubborn even to his own ears. “I’m… going to try and go to class.”

 Ron and Hermione exchanged a look between them that Harry didn’t like. Even Neville, across from him and probably having heard the entire conversation (alongside most of their year, honestly), looked sort of disapproving – though it might have been a more impactful attempt at disapproval if his mouth wasn’t stuffed full of cereal.

 “Well…” Hermione said finally, slowly. “If you’re certain…”

 “Yeah.”

 Ron gave him a look that said, “ _We both know repeating something untrue until you believe it doesn’t work.”_ It was startling reminiscent of Molly Weasley, which was a thought that probably would have been disturbing to everyone, including Ron himself, if it had been said aloud. Thankfully, Ron did not say what his look was saying, and instead went about helping himself to enough breakfast to cover Hermione at least twice and Harry’s lack of appetite besides.

 “Well, it  _is_ up to you, Harry,” Hermione said, helping herself to a less ravenous meal. “But don’t think you  _have_ to. And you’re allowed to change your mind, too, if how you feel changes.”

 “’Mione, I  _know._ ”

 “I’m just  _reminding_ you,” Hermione protested. “Just in case.”

 Harry frowned, rubbing the side of his twinging head. “Just in case of what?”

 Hermione was buttering her toast with a lot of jabbing motions, and said mulishly, “You never  _know._ ” Which seemed to spark some important realization, because she suddenly dropped her toast back onto her plate and dove for her bulging book-bag. “I have an Arithmancy quiz today! Harry, will you quiz me? Wait, no, you’re eating. You need to eat.”

 “So do you,” Ron pointed out, through a mouthful of eggs.

 Hermione looked at him with considering horror. Not because of what he’d said, his comment had obviously been instantly dismissed; but rather, she was caught in a dilemma, between not getting in extra study time and letting an eating Ron anywhere near her study questions. She looked between her options and turned away from them both.

 “Neville! Quiz me?”

 “Um, sure?”

 

~

 

 To no one’s surprise, Harry immediately regretted being stubborn and insisting he attend class. Even if he didn’t want to sleep, he could have done something else, like go sit somewhere quiet or maybe visit the kitchens again. Maybe he could have seen the Grim again. He didn’t mean the death omen, he didn’t much like the death omen thing; but he’d rather liked that odd dog and he was now somewhat, very quietly worried about the large dog not being regularly fed. It had been very thin.

 Against logic and despite all previous classes, he had somehow managed to ignore the fact that Gryffindor had History and Care of Magical Creatures with Slytherin on Monday mornings. If Harry’s dementor-inspired nightmares weren’t so awful, he might have considered knocking himself out against a desk or nearby tree, because that morning was the next closest thing to unbearable.

 Malfoy was in top form today, as the protective wall of Professor McGonagall was no longer there to stop him and his cronies from tormenting Harry. Binns’ deathly drawl on the invention of laundry charms was given an annoying undercurrent of snickering whispers and hushed commentary. Harry gave up taking notes ten minutes into class and put his burning face in his arms, so he didn’t have to see more of Malfoy’s impressions of the humiliating match and was a smaller target for the paper balls that were periodically flicked at his head when Binns’ ghostly back was turned. He pretended to sleep, but he was fairly certain everyone knew he was awake and miserable the entire time.

 Care of Magical Creatures was no better. In fact, it was worse. Professor Binns was largely unobservant, but he still wouldn’t let his class be loudly and obnoxiously interrupted; but poor Professor Hagrid, on the other hand, was another story. Hagrid’s confidence had been shot ever since the incident with Buckbeak had escalated into Lucius Malfoy making as much of a menace of himself as he could, and the younger Malfoy greedily seized this opportunity of uncertainty to be as much of a menace as he could as well. He was as loud and obnoxious, and as insulting and mocking, as was possibly possible towards every Gryffindor – to Hagrid and Hufflepuff as well, of course, as a side note – but especially Harry. 

 Harry sat through an incredibly dull lesson with a panging headache, a nauseated stomach, and a growing urge to  _actually_ injure Malfoy’s “recently healed” arm. He hadn’t been the only one, too. Seamus looked like he was recently to fight when Malfoy interrupted the same sentence from Hagrid’s lesson for the third time in the row. Dean looked tempted to let him.

 And just when the boring lesson and infuriating hour was almost over, Harry’s slightly lifting mood was instantly ruined when, on the way back to the castle, he caught sight of several black shapes on the far side of the lake.

  _Dementors._

 They were barely more than spots so far away, but Harry knew immediately what they were. They drifted unnaturally over the distant shore, their cloaks shifting with the breeze, appearing not unlike very large and very strange birds. There were at least ten of them on the shore, fairly spread out around the far side of the lake, and smaller black spots still farther away that spoke of more beyond.

 In that moment, it didn’t matter to Harry how many of them there were or how far away they were. It didn’t matter that he had to squint to make sure they weren’t just someone’s hanging laundry and couldn’t really tell, he knew what they were and he could feel… something. A chill went down his spine, his fingers felt sweaty and numb around his book-bag’s straps, his throat was dry, and sudden anxiety had stabbed him below the stomach and twisted. He could breathe, still, but he was sudden all too aware of the swell of his chest and the distance to the ground if he now fell. His head was throbbing fiercely, as though trying to blind him.

 “Harry, what’re you looking at-?” Ron said, before trailing off with an, “Oh.”

 There were passing jeers in the background from Malfoy and his cronies, which added a dizzying flush of humiliation to Harry’s overwhelmed moment. He could hear Lavender and Parvati whispering with concern, see Neville paused with concern out of the corner of his eye, and feel Hermione’s hand come to rest carefully on his arm.

 What he couldn’t hear, no matter how he strained, was his mother’s dying voice again. Lily Potter’s final moments were far away from him, far across the lake with those distant black shapes, far out of reach.

 “Come on, mate,” Ron said, pulling him back towards the castle again. “Don’t look at those things, that’s just gonna make you feel worse… OI, FUCK OFF, MALFOY. No one asked you, you cheating coward!” His voice then lowered and gentled again to say, “We’re going back to the dorm.”

 Harry suddenly felt too numb and tired to argue this, as humiliating as it was to be penned and coddled between a determined Ron and Hermione. He wanted to tell everyone to stop pitying him, but his friends’ hands felt like the only warm things in the world right now, and he wanted nothing more than to hide away from the world for a little bit. To be free of everything, for a small forever.

 “Alright,” he said.

Ron pushed them forward to follow a couple of Slytherin girls in heading straight back to the castle, and Daphne Greengrass and Tracey Davis politely moved aside for them. Harry thought Davis, a small dark-skinned girl he didn’t know at all, might have winked at him as they passed, a suspicion encouraged by how she and Greengrass, a tall and pale blonde he didn’t know either, suddenly moved to block the whole path and started walking a lot slower.

 Davis suddenly struck up conversation with Dean behind her, which added him and Seamus to the barricade. And they were made a larger blockade still when Lavender, behind them arm-in-arm with Parvati, apparently spontaneously decided to ask Millicent Bulstrode behind her about how she’d heard pet cats and rabbits could get along very well.

 Harry went along with Ron and Hermione and watched over his shoulder, amazed, at the closed crowd of people all walking very slowly together and keeping Malfoy and company – Goyle, Crabbe, Pansy Parkinson, and a very annoyed-looking Theodore Nott – from moving past them. Malfoy looked very indignant and upset about it, Davis definitely winked at Harry, and at the bottom of the stairs up to the castle, the odd pair of Neville Longbottom and Blaise Zabini were separately standing back and watching the whole strange parade. 

 Neville waved, a little anxiously, and, if Harry had had an arm free and wasn’t suddenly so very tired, he would have waved back to assure his friend that he was fine. He didn’t know if he was or not, of course, but he still felt bad about yesterday and didn’t want to worry anyone any more than he already did.

 Ron and Hermione marched him all the way back to Gryffindor Tower together, ranting off one another in righteous fury on his behalf. Harry lost track of their fast-paced argument-plotting, but by the time they actually got to the Fat Lady’s portrait, it sounded like Hermione was going to overthrow the Ministry of Magic and Ron was going to vote for her as Magical Empress of Britain. Harry hadn’t really been paying attention over his headache, though, so he wasn’t sure.

 Neither was Harry sure how exactly they got into Gryffindor Tower and how he and Ron got up the stairs to their dormitory. Hermione, he thought, had squeaked something about being late for class before dashing off again. Some way or another, it ended up being him and Ron, alone in their dormitory, and Ron pushing Harry towards the four-poster bed he hadn’t seen all weekend.

 “Lie down, mate,” Ron said.

 “I’m not sleeping,” Harry insisted, although he did relent to sit on the bed.

 Ron frowned but didn’t look at him, too busy grabbing an empty cereal bowl off his bedside. First, Ron cleaned the bowl of any leftovers, then Transfigured the bowl a little larger until it was about the size of a mixing bowl. He then handed the bowl to Harry.

 “You look like you’re going to puke,” Ron countered instead of arguing. “Just have a lie down for a bit, alright? You don’t have to sleep. We’ve got a whole free period before lunch, might as well spend it somewhere comfortable, right? I’m getting us some water.”

 Harry wanted to argue still, but Ron left the dorm before he could find an argument. This left Harry alone in their darkened dorm, sitting on his bed and unhappily holding a bowl, and it brought to the forefront too many things he didn’t want to focus on. Like how his hands were trembling, numb and sweaty around the bowl on his lap, and his abdomen felt it had been stabbed. His headache had returned, worse than ever, and it suddenly sounded very tempting to lie down over his smooth, cool covers and stay in the soft dark until he felt better.

 “Thanks,” Harry said, when Ron returned and offered him a glass of water. It was probably just tap water from the washroom or something, but it was clear and cool, and he at once felt a thousand times better and a little sicker by how his stomach bubbled at him. He put the bowl on the side table and put his head down on the covers of his bed, just to make the world steady for a bit.

 “No problem, mate,” Ron said, kicking up his feet and reaching into his book-bag for a textbook. “I’ll watch the time and let you know when it’s lunch, alright?”

 “Alright,” Harry agreed quietly. 

 


	5. The Wolf and the Fawn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Firstly, I would like to come out outright and point out that a very large part of Harry and Remus' conversation is taken outright, paraphrased, or paralleled. Throughout this fic, to get the feel right (as this is a fanfic and AU of POA), there are bits and pieces that are taken from the POA book, and I apologize. Thankfully, however, after this chapter is where we truly become canon divergent (the book skips over pretty much the entire rest of November and December, but I plan to explore these months with more Cedric, Sirius, and Remus, introduce some OCs, go wildly off the canon tracks in terms of style/plot, etc), so this shouldn't happen again. 
> 
> Secondly, I hope you enjoyed these chapters. (This was a double update. Did you get both?)

 “Hey, Harry, you feel like eating anything? I’ve got lunch and you should eat.”

 While napping could be an excellent restorative, there was always the dangerous consequence of waking up anywhere from slightly groggy to undead, and feeling entirely lost with little idea of what day it was or where one was. Harry fortunately only woke up slightly groggy, but unfortunately it took him a moment to remember who he was and where he might be. He had no memory of falling asleep at all, no idea what the time might be, and felt a little like he had just managed to sleep a whole week away and reached tired from the other side, accumulating many detentions in his wake.

 “Harry?” Ron repeated, peering down at him. He looked and sounded, in this moment, so much like his mother that Harry sleep-confused brain needed another moment to register this. “I’ve got more water and lunch. If you’re not gonna eat, you at least have to drink something.”

 Harry felt mostly like sleeping for the rest of his life, but, at the same time, his throat was a little dry and his stomach had settled enough to grumble loudly about how hungry he was. He sat up, only feeling a little light-headed, to face his friend. Harry felt a little embarrassed that Ron was trying to take care of him like this, but when he tried to express how unnecessary this was, Ron wouldn’t hear of it, and when he tried to sincerely thank Ron, Ron wouldn’t hear of that either and turned bright red. In the end, Harry gave up and instead dug into the plate Ron had brought him, embarrassed, while a red-eared Ron dug into his own plate of food.

 Ron explained that Harry had slept through all of third period and most of lunch, and that Hermione was downstairs reviewing her Arithmancy quiz right now. They were waiting to see if Harry felt like going to fourth period Defence Against the Dark Arts, or if he felt like going back to the hospital wing to see if Madam Pomfrey could give him anything to make him feel better.

 After having been awake for a bit and having had something to drink and eat, Harry felt a little better, so he decided he might as well go to Defence. His head still hurt a little and he felt a somewhat clammy, but the stitch in his side was gone and he overall felt about as well as he had all day. He didn’t want to go back to the hospital wing. Gryffindor took Defence with the Ravenclaws, so Harry wouldn’t have to deal with Malfoy, but he still didn’t want anyone to think he was weak. He didn’t tell Ron all this, though, and instead just said that he was feeling a lot better.

 Ron seemed sceptical, but he didn’t argue. He just tidied up all their dirty dishes as Harry pulled his bookbag together, and led the way out of their dormitory and down the stairs. Hermione was waiting for them at the bottom and she too seemed sceptical of Harry’s wellness but didn’t argue. She just packed up her Arithmancy notes and, as they all stepped out of the portrait hole, asked them if they were sticking to their plans from yesterday for the essay due.

 “Oh, shit,” Harry said, having completely forgotten about Snape. “Never mind, I am sick.”

 Hermione seemed torn between encouraging Harry to go to the hospital wing and chastising him for wanting to skive, but Ron laughed and agreed wholeheartedly. “If Snape’s teaching Defence again, I’m skiving off with you,” he said firmly.

 That sentiment seemed to be shared among the rest of the Gryffindors and Ravenclaws in their year, as they found a small crowd of people stalling outside Lupin’s classroom after lunch. Lavender explained that nobody had wanted to be the first to go in, so Anthony Goldstein had pulled out a deck of cards and now everyone who hadn’t flat-out refused was playing to see who’d take the short stick. Dean, Parvati, and Parvati’s sister Padma seemed to have teamed up against all four of the Ravenclaw boys (Boot, Cornfoot, Entwhistle, and Goldstein).

 “Oh, hey, Granger,” Goldstein said, not looking up from his cards. “What’d you get for question five on the Arithmancy quiz?”

 “Four and a hidden fifth,” Hermione answered.

 “Oh, good, I wasn’t sure about that one,” Goldstein said, obviously very relieved, while behind him Lisa Turpin paled and Stephen Cornfoot swore very colourfully. “But if that’s what you got, then it’s probably right. I’ll deal you into this if you promise not to count the cards again.”

 “You’re all ridiculous,” Hermione said, and bypassed the card game to check the classroom herself. Everyone held their breath, keeping perfectly silent, as Hermione opened the classroom door and peered inside.

 His head against the opposite wall, Neville seemed to be begging the universe for  _anything_ but Snape.

 “It’s okay!”

 Harry had been ready to do a runner, but instead found himself pushing forward with everyone else to see the classroom first. Parvati and Padma leaped to their feet, blocking Seamus who was trying to drag Dean up, and Su Li ducked under Mandy Brocklehurst’s arms to peer around Hermione. Goldstein cursed a little at the chaos and summoned all his playing cards back to his hand with a flick of his wrist, which the other Ravenclaw boys looked more than a little put-out about.

 Much to everyone’s delight, it wasn’t a different substitute, but Professor Lupin back at work again. He certainly looked as though he’d been ill, with greyed shadows still beneath his eyes and his old robes hanging more loosely off his tall frame. Harry didn’t know how the man summoned the energy to smile, warm and genuine, at the class as they all took their seats. The smile changed his tired face entirely, and it made something in Harry’s chest flop at seeing it again.

 Lupin’s warm smile turned to one of bewilderment, however, as the class broke out into an explosion of complaints about Snape’s behaviour while Lupin had been ill. Even if Harry’s Gryffindor classmates weren’t indignant at extra, off-syllabus homework, Ravenclaw’s fury had them covered.

 “It’s not fair, he was only filling in, why should he give us homework?” Seamus said.

 “We don’t know anything about werewolves,” Kevin Entwhistle was arguing. “One measly lecture-”

 “ _Two_ rolls of parchment-!” Su Li exclaimed, aghast.

 Lupin’s smile was fading from his face, as he tried to listen to everyone at once. “Did you tell Professor Snape we haven’t covered them yet?” he asked, frowning slightly.

 “Yes, but he said we were really behind!” Padma Patil explained.

 “He wouldn’t listen!” Goldstein said, angrily and absentmindedly shuffling cards in his seat.

 “Two rolls of parchment!” Su Li repeated, louder. “Due today! We don’t have time for-”

 Professor Lupin smiled at the look of indignation of every face. Harry noticed that it was much more wan than the genuine smile that had greeted them all, his faded scars standing out a little too much on his greyed face.

 “Don’t worry. I’ll speak to Professor Snape. You don’t have to do the essay.”

 A sigh of relief echoed around the room, but Harry saw Hermione’s fingers tighten around a collection of parchment in her lap. Hermione’s lips set into a thin line for a moment, before she jammed the finished essay back into her bookbag, apparently uncaring whether or not it got squashed by all her Transfiguration texts and other books. She had an intensely thoughtful and determined look on her face, one that made Harry exchange a knowing look with Ron; they hadn’t heard the last of this.

 “I apologize for my brief absence,” Lupin continued, as they all settled down. “Hopefully, my friend here will make for a very enjoyable lesson.” He pulled his wand from his sleeve and waved it over the cloth-covered terrarium behind him, which was as large as the desk it was resting on.

 The classroom oo-ed and ahh-ed as Lupin revealed a small swamp, complete with a slice of bog and some mist. Inside was a little one-legged creature that looked to be made of wisps of smoke itself, frail and harmless-looking, no features beyond thin wispy arms curled protective around a lantern.

 “A hinkypunk!” someone exclaimed.

 What followed was indeed a very enjoyable lesson, and would have been enjoyable even if every other lesson Harry had today hadn’t been awful. Professor Lupin knew a lot of basic facts about hinkypunks, but went on to explain how to avoid them and how to trick them in return, and had several amusing or sad stories on encounters with hinkypunks. They took a lot of notes, and were all on the edge of their seat as Professor Lupin managed to trick the hinkypunk into thinking it had someone to lure into its bog and then managed to trap them. It didn’t look so frail and harmless-looking then, making a horrible squelching noise against the glass as it realized it had been tricked into giving them all a demonstration and not gotten a proper victim.

 During the lesson, Harry managed to ignore his headache quite well. He felt almost well by the end of it and was very glad he’d decided to go. Once or twice, he looked up and thought he saw Professor Lupin’s eyes flickering away from him as though the man had been staring, but whenever Harry was looking back, Professor Lupin’s gaze moved equally over their class. Harry decided it had probably been wishful thinking, just like hoping his favourite professor might come visit him in the hospital wing despite being ill himself.

 Soon enough, the lesson ended and Professor Lupin spent the last five minutes before the bell answering any remaining questions. When the bell rang, everyone gathered up their things, talking excitedly and in much better moods than when they’d come in, Harry among them. Ron quipped something about Snape’s foiled plot with the homework, which made Harry laugh as they made to leave for Transfiguration.

 “Wait a moment, please, Harry,” Lupin called. “I’d like a word.”

 Harry looked at Ron, who shrugged and went to go join Hermione, who was arguing Arithmancy with Goldstein. Harry doubled back, feeling both awkward and uncertainly excited, and watched as Professor Lupin covered the hinkypunk’s terrarium with the cloth again.

 “I heard about the match,” Lupin said, after the last few students had left, busying himself with some papers in his briefcase. “I’m sorry about your broomstick. Is there any chance of fixing it?”

 “No,” Harry answered. “The tree smashed it to bits.”

 Even if they could manage to glue his Nimbus back into one piece, Harry wouldn’t get on it for a million galleons. Even if it flew at all – which it probably wouldn’t, because brooms didn’t work like that – Harry imagined it would be rather like Ron’s Spell-o-taped wand. After a year of sitting next to that, he knew he’d have better luck flapping his arms and trying to fly all on his own.

 “They planted the Whomping Willow the same year that I arrived at Hogwarts,” Lupin said, still busying himself with his papers. He gave a small laugh and said, “People used to play a game, actually, trying to get near enough to touch the trunk. In the end, a boy called Davey Gudgeon nearly lost an eye trying to train for Quidditch, and we were forbidden to go near it. No broomstick would have a chance.”

  _Don’t give Wood any ideas, please,_ Harry almost said.

 But he was caught up in what had caused him to fall in the first place, feelings of shame and embarrassment curdling in his stomach again. This made for the second time that he’d fainted because of the dementors, nearly dying because he was too weak to stay on his broom, and this time it had happened in front of the entire school.

 “Did… you hear about the dementors too?” said Harry with difficulty.

 Lupin looked at him quickly, finally forsaking the papers. He was frowning, rather fiercely, and Harry felt his head ache and stomach stitch with anxiety again. It took a lot for him to stand there and meet the man’s eyes, but even then a burning feeling was moving up his face.

 “Yes, I did,” Lupin said. “It was unacceptable of them to trespass. I don’t think any of us have seen Professor Dumbledore that angry. He and Professor McGonagall have been giving the Ministry a piece of their minds all weekend.”

 “Really?” Harry asked.

 Lupin smiled at him, reassuring and warm. “Yes, really. It’s been a long time coming, really. They have been growing restless for some time – furious about his refusal to let them inside the grounds – the complaints from Hogsmeade alone…” Lupin sighed and shook his head, before fixing Harry with a concerned look. “I suppose they were the reason you fell?”

 “Yes,” Harry said. “It’s…” He hesitated, desperately wanting answers but not having questions for them, shame pressing down on his curiosity. “Are… we going to learn about dementors in class?”

 “Originally, no, not this year,” Lupin answered. “Dementors are among the foulest creatures that walk this earth, so they aren’t usually considered third year material.” He smiled at Harry again, but tightly, as he leaned back against his desk. “But I have been considering a special lesson for all years, to inform students of exactly what sort of evil that the Ministry has seen fit to expose them to.”

 Lupin’s hand, Harry noticed, was white-knuckled around the edge of his desk. He looked not unlike how he had just before he’d left to speak to the train conductor.

 “Forgive me,” he said, “perhaps-”

 “No, that sounds good,” Harry said, glad.

 This was why Lupin was his favourite teacher, not just because he was fair and funny, but because he knew a lot about his subject and then taught them something practical. Harry liked Charms and Transfiguration and so on, but Lupin’s lessons were just…  _useful._ Not for the first time, he wished Professor Lupin had been around during his first and second year.

 “Just… why do they affect me so badly?” Harry said, unable to keep himself from blurting out the questions any longer. He still didn’t know what exactly dementors were, but he couldn’t wait until some lesson to know this part. “Why is it only me who falls? Am I just-?”

 “It has nothing to do with weakness,” Professor Lupin said sharply, then quieted before Harry’s eyes. “There are horrors in your past that your classmates simply do not have, such that they cannot understand – experiences that many will never have, made worse by your age.”

 Lupin suddenly looked older than his years, like he was ill again. All his smiles had faded, which brought out the grey in his hair and all the lines and scars on his young face.

 “There are many adult witches and wizards who have difficulty with dementors, on the rare occasions they encounter them, to have them around a school is… dangerous and irresponsible. Dementors normally infest only the darkest, filthiest places. They glory in decay and despair; they drain peace, hope, and happiness out of the very air around them; and they will feed on anyone they come near. Even Muggles feel their presence, though they can’t see them. Dementors are soulless things that seek to leech every good feeling and happy memory from their victims, leaving nothing but a person’s worst experiences. Your worst experiences, Harry, are more than enough to make anyone fall off their broom. You have nothing to feel ashamed of.”

 Harry stared at Lupin, feeling at once awed, embarrassed, heartened, and a little unsure. He didn’t know what to say to this. He had so many questions that he didn’t have enough words to go around to all of them. Lupin smiled at him, reassuring and warm, and moved back to his briefcase.

 “I’m sorry about your Quidditch match as well, by the way,” Lupin said. “I hear you’re a very good Seeker.”

 Harry didn’t know what to say to this either, torn between pride and embarrassment. “Why did they even come to the match?” he asked. It wasn’t as though they could have been looking for Sirius Black at a Quidditch match, like they’d been on the train.

 “Dumbledore won’t let them into the school, so their supply of human prey has dried up,” Lupin explained coolly. “They’re getting hungry. The Hogsmeade residents have said some things… I don’t think they could resist the large crowd around the pitch. All that excitement… emotions running high… it was probably their idea of a feast after months of starving. They’re not used to restraining their appetites.”

 “Azkaban sounds terrible,” Harry muttered.

 Lupin nodded grimly, staring off towards the windows of the classroom. “One of the worst places in the world, according to anyone unfortunate enough to visit.” A note of bitterness entered Lupin’s voice, one that seemed oddly out of place against his smiles and warmth.

 “Have you been?” Harry asked, before he could stop himself.

 Lupin looked at him in surprise and Harry realized that he’d technically just asked his Defence Against the Dark Arts professor if he'd ever been to prison.

 “I didn’t mean-”

 “I know,” Lupin said, reassuring and bemused. “No, I haven’t visited. But,” he continued with memory, “if one lived through the war, hearing about the fortress can’t be helped.”

 “That’s where the dementors are from, right?” Harry asked, wondering if it was appropriate to ask his professor about war. Almost no one mentioned it, beyond Hagrid occasionally, and Harry and his friends respectfully didn’t ask Hagrid about things like Azkaban or war.

 “It’s difficult to say where dementors are from, exactly, but the Ministry works to confine them there, as guards. Do you know about-?” Lupin asked, and Harry shook his head. “It’s a fortress, set on a tiny island up north, way out to sea.” Lupin reached for his briefcase again, going through several papers as though looking for something. “With dementors as guards, however, they hardly need walls and water to keep the prisoners in – not when they’re all trapped inside their own heads, incapable of a single cheery thought. Most of them go mad within weeks.”

 “But Sirius Black escaped from them,” Harry said slowly. “He got away…”

 Lupin’s briefcase slipped from the desk, he dove to catch it but missed, and it clattered to the floor with all his papers fluttering along. Harry rushed forward to help his professor pick up the papers, but Lupin held up a hand to stop him.

 “It’s alright, Harry, thank you,” Lupin said, sighing and waving his wand over the fallen papers. They collected themselves and filed back into the briefcase, which floated up back onto his desk, and he didn’t move to touch it again.

 “Sorry, I didn’t mean to…” Harry trailed off, under Lupin’s intense gaze. “It’s just… does that mean there are ways of fighting back, against a dementor?”

 “Of course there are, Harry, there’s nothing that cannot be fought against somehow. I wouldn’t use whatever method Black used as an example, though… I wouldn’t have believed it possible that someone could find a way to fight them, but Si-” Lupin cut himself off, straightening. “Dementors are supposed to drain a wizard of his powers if left with them too long. Willpower, too. I have no idea how Black did what he did.”

 “What about what method you used on the train to make the dementor back off” Harry pushed, lifted by realization. “Can you teach me?”

 Lupin looked startled and unsure. “There was only one dementor on the train, Harry, and I don’t at all pretend to be an expert at fighting dementors. Quite the contrary, truthfully, I-”

 “Please, Professor,” Harry said. “If the dementors come to another Quidditch match-”

 “They won’t be allowed near another Quidditch match again. Dumbledore-”

 “They weren’t allowed near this one, but that didn’t stop them. And what if they come on the train again?” Harry argued. “Please, Professor, anything that might help fight them off.”

 “It’s quite complex magic, Harry, nothing I would expect of even a fifth-year,” Lupin said weakly.

 “I don’t care, I need to be able to fight them.”

 Lupin still seemed hesitant, but Harry put on his best determined expression as he looked up at the man, and Lupin finally said, “Well… alright. I’ll try and help.”

 “Thank you,” Harry said, relieved.

 “I don’t know when we’ll be able to schedule these lessons, I’m afraid,” Lupin said. “I have a lot to do before the holidays. I chose a very inconvenient time to fall ill, and it seems as though I left several lessons that weren’t given out. Why don’t we talk about this again on Thursday? You’re going to be late for your next class and I’m sure mine is waiting in the hallway for me now.”

 Harry glanced at the clock on the wall and his stomach flipped. Lupin was right, he was going to be late for Transfiguration at this rate. If Ron and Hermione had left without him, he hoped they’d make his excuses.

 “I’ll write you a note for McGonagall. I believe that’s the other class third-years have this afternoon,” Lupin said, moving to scribble said note on a piece of parchment. “You know, I don’t think that’s changed in the twenty years since I was at Hogwarts.”

 “Thanks, Professor,” Harry said, “and any little bit’s fine. If there’s some charm, actually, that could keep them from getting near me in the first place, that’d be great. Because when they get near me-” Harry stared at Lupin’s desk while the man wrote quickly, his throat tight. “I can hear Voldemort murdering my mum. So…”

 Lupin, who had just finished writing the note and moved to hand it to Harry, stiffened. The man’s eyes had gone wide and between his expression and his illness, he looked like a light breeze would knock him off his feet.

 “Thanks,” Harry said, awkwardly, taking the note.

  And then, much to Harry’s surprise, Lupin suddenly reached out and his warm hand was gently gripping Harry’s shoulder. Harry looked up at his professor, taken aback at the gesture.

 “Harry,” Lupin said, after a moment’s hesitation, as though he had almost thought better of it. “I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but I want you to know that I’m deeply sorry for your loss. Lily and James were extraordinary people and they would be extraordinarily proud of having such a strong and determined son. You should never have had to hear such a terrible thing… I’m sorry that you did, and… I will do my best to try and help you.”

 Lupin sounded terribly sincere, his face miserable and voice remorseful, as though he was somehow to blame for Lily and James Potter’s deaths instead of Lord Voldemort and would do anything to undo them. Harry didn’t know what to do. His heart was flopping fiercely in his chest, his throat felt tight, and his eyes suddenly and very rebelliously started watering at the edges. He couldn’t remember if he had ever had anyone tell him they were sorry for his loss before – at least, never so sincerely.

 “Thanks,” Harry said hoarsely.

 “You’re very welcome, Harry,” Lupin said, after another moment’s hesitation. He looked as though he might say something about Harry’s watery eyes and voice, but he thankfully didn’t. Instead, he flicked his wand at his briefcase and summoned a handkerchief, which he handed to Harry as he let go of Harry’s shoulder. “Dementors are terrible things, I hope you feel better soon.”

 “You too,” Harry said, holding onto the handkerchief and note in his hands like lifelines. “Feel better, I mean. You’re the best Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher we’ve ever had, you know.”

 Lupin smiled down at him. “I would hope so, if even half of what I’ve heard about your previous teachers is true,” he said, before adding in a brighter tone, “I’ve never felt so ill in my life, actually, as when I tried to make sense of last year’s lesson plans.”

 It took Harry a second, but then he grinned and said very innocently, “There were lesson plans?”

 Lupin laughed, clearly taken by surprise, quickly cutting himself off and putting a hand over his mouth in an attempt to control his smile. He opened his mouth to reply, but the bell cut off whatever he was about to say.

 “Ah, better hurry along, Harry,” he said instead. “I would hate for Professor McGonagall to threaten to turn you into a pocket-watch… and I don’t imagine your yearmates will be happy to politely wait in the hallway much longer.”

 Before Professor Lupin finished his sentence, he was proven correct, as the door opened and Hannah Abbott peered into the classroom. Harry hurried to leave so the Hufflepuff and Slytherin third-years could go in for their lesson on hinkypunks, waving to Professor Lupin over his shoulder (“Bye, Professor!”), hearing Professor Lupin’s farewell and beckoning to the other students behind him. Stepping out of the classroom, Harry brushed past Ernie MacMillan excitedly sharing with the others that Professor Lupin was back, and came almost face to face with Malfoy.

 Malfoy was clearly entirely unprepared to see Harry, leaning against the corridor wall and in the middle of talking at Crabbe and Goyle about something, because he didn’t have another insult or dementor impression to immediately share. Harry didn’t see Ron and Hermione anywhere about – they’d probably gone on to Transfiguration – and he wasn’t about to give Malfoy time to get over his surprise and come up with anything, so…

 “Hippogriff got your tongue too, Malfoy?” Harry said.

 Then he immediately turned on his heel and set off towards Transfiguration, with a skip in his step and whistling as he went, his headache the last thing on his mind. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter, we go back to Cedric and Quidditch stuff. (The pineapple's coming back.) Then, I think it's off to Sirius and house elves again, before a certain map makes an appearance alongside werewolf rights.


	6. The Badger Among the Lions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, it's been a while. This is pretty fluffy. This is where I start inventing events wildly, because as far as canon goes, as soon as that returning lesson with Lupin is over, it skips right over the rest of November in one or two paragraphs with the note that Ravenclaw flattens Hufflepuff in Quidditch at the end of November.

 By Wednesday, Harry was feeling much better. His nightmares had gone back to being manageable, waking him in a cold sweat at worst only once so far, and he hadn’t caught sight of dementors at all since Monday. The promise of Professor Lupin’s lessons buoyed him through all of Malfoy and cronies’ taunting, Snape’s usual subtle yet persistent insults, Trelawney’s insistence that Harry had been but a brush from A Most Gruesome Death, and the annoying staring in the hallways that always came with his most recent bit of near-death or scandal.

 The only thing that Professor Lupin’s promise couldn’t fix, unfortunately, was Harry’s broken broomstick. Which put a bit of a damper on the next Quidditch practice for the Gryffindor team, which happened after the last class on the Wednesday after the Saturday match. Wood apparently wasn’t going to let their next official match being in  _March_ or Gryffindor possibly being out of the Quidditch Cup running bring training to even a temporary stop.

 What was more unbelievable and bewildering, however, was that Wood had brought the pineapple to practice – the one that George had given him from Harry’s hospital fruit bowl. Wood explained to Harry, with the manic air of someone trying to prove they were not a madman, that it had taken him a few days to realize he had a pineapple on his side table. Percy had apparently snapped and finally demanded to know why they had a tropical fruit in their dorm room that Oliver wasn’t doing anything with.

 Then, of course, Wood hadn’t wanted to eat it because he’d considered it stolen from Harry, since the twins hadn’t asked Harry when gifting it to their loss-stunned captain in a strange-but-earnest-enough attempt at cheering him up. 

 “No, no, you can have it,” Harry assured his captain.

 He, along with the rest of the team, had been audience to Wood trying to explain himself not a madman enough times that there was no explanation or proof that would do anymore. What was he even going to do with a pineapple?

 “I don’t even really like pineapple, it’s fine.”

 “Oh,” said Wood, in the voice of someone who also didn’t know what to do with a pineapple.

 Then, stalwart in the face of the twins’ snickering, he dropped the fruit alongside the equipment trunk to decide what to do with it later. He cleared his throat and called practice to a start.

 The Gryffindor Quidditch Team stood united by disbelief in front of their captain, who had managed to drag a chalkboard to the middle of the field and immediately launched into revised potential paths towards the Quidditch Cup and the new tactics he’d been brainstorming since Sunday night.

 Alicia squinted at the chalkboard like she was trying to make out shapes, while Katie listened with the desperate confusion of someone who wasn’t keeping up, and Angelina stared at Oliver like she was trying to gauge whether their impassioned captain had  _slept_ since Sunday morning. Fred and George were murmuring their own conversation to one another, as usual, and all Harry could do was stand in front of them and feel very foolish and empty-handed in full Quidditch gear.

 He was the only one without a broomstick. 

 He'd considered bringing his broken Nimbus, but decided it wouldn’t do anything and be very sad besides. It hadn’t even been a week and Harry still wasn’t entirely over the loss of his beloved broomstick. He hadn’t been able to do more than glance at the  _Quality Quidditch Supplies_ catalogues that  _someone_ had lately been leaving all over Gryffindor Tower, including the bathrooms.

 “This is real nice and all, Oliver,” George interrupted, when their captain took a much-needed pause to breathe. “But what’s Harry supposed to do? Flap his arms and hope real hard?”

 Wood frowned bewilderedly, stopped in the way of someone who’d lost their place and needed a moment to get the words working again and compose new ones. Harry hoped rather desperately that he wasn’t going to be expected to try to fly without a broomstick. Oliver Wood had a terrible history of accidentally or purposefully taking the twins’ jokes seriously, if he thought it might give them an advantage. But that  _had_ to be against the rules, didn’t it?

 Luckily, Angelina, who'd been made Wood's vice-captain this year, stepped in before anything else could be done with jokes. “How about we get the key to the broom-shed from Madam Hooch so Harry can find a temporary broom? He can get a feel for what he’s looking for and get used to a different broom for practices.”

 “Ugh, but the firstie brooms are awful and the spares aren’t much better,” Alicia said. Then Angelina and the twins both shot her a  _look,_ and she continued, “But you can borrow mine for a bit if you like, Harry.”

 Angelina and the twins then turned their look on Wood, and the Gryffindor captain had little choice but to agree with Angelina’s suggestion. He then looked back at his chalkboard, as though to find his place again. The twins wasted no time in not giving him the opportunity to continue. Fred and George looped their arms through his to march him away from the complex diagrams to speak to Madam Hooch, declaring that it was only right that their illustrious captain do the speaking.

 “Since he’s so keen to talk,” Alicia muttered.

 They didn’t have to go far to find Madam Hooch. She supervised Quidditch practices and was usually to be found sitting in the stands with a book and her tea set, if she wasn’t reprimanding someone for some ridiculous stunt or helping someone else get unstuck from a stands tower. And, since the increase in security due to Sirius Black, she even usually had another professor’s company. Gryffindor always had two professors watching them nowadays, and sometimes three if Professor McGonagall popped in to see “how the team was coming along”, as she’d been doing with far more frequency this year alone than she had in years past combined.

 Today, Madam Hooch and Professor Sinistra, the Astronomy teacher, were wrapped up warmly on lawn-chairs just off the side of the pitch. Hooch’s broom, should she need it, was leaning against her chair while she poured Sinistra a steaming cuppa from a teapot decorated by painted snidgets and buttercup flowers. The witches watched curiously as the team approached.

 Madam Hooch immediately declared the suggestion a fine idea. Soon, Harry had a small pile of spare broomsticks in front of him and whatever plans Wood had had were cancelled by unanimous, unspoken decision.

 In the spirit of things, the entire team decided to try out different broomsticks with him, picking from the pile of spares or swapping between them. Even Wood reluctantly joined in on the fun, once Fred pointed out that it helped sort between the good, the bad, and the ugly of Hogwarts’ broom-shed spares for all of them to lend a bum.

 It was a far better practice than Harry had been expected when he’d marched out onto the pitch, mostly because it wasn’t much of a practice at all. He listened raptly to Wood, who was happy to have an avid listener as he described the history behind and trivia around a lot of the broom models as Harry tried them.

 The twins snatched up the pineapple and tossed it back and forth a few times, before Alicia stole it mid-air and lifted it over her head to declare it team mascot.

 Then Harry laughed until he fell off a broom (it was thankfully only a couple feet onto the soft grass of the pitch) at the sight of George trying to wrangle his long limbs onto Katie’s comparatively tiny broomstick. Katie, meanwhile, complained so loudly about how George’s broom was too big and too “burly” – built for withstanding someone batting Bludgers about instead of a Chaser’s nimble needs – that Angelina and Alicia, nudging each other and giggling, had to give it a try too.

 By the time the clock-tower was tolling and Madam Hooch was packing up her tea set, they’d discovered that all three Chasers could fit onto Wood’s broom. Not well, but enough to skim unevenly over the grass, giggling or shrieking loudly during turns... or when one of them fell off.

 The practice from there had dissolved - firmly and fully - into tossing increasingly awful Quidditch innuendo about, after Fred said something to Wood that turned their captain the colour of a tomato. Angelina had immediately noticed and heckled them all for it with a joke that had just turned their captain redder, and it had gone to truly unstoppable chaos from there. They were all breathless and red-faced by the time Wood managed to wheeze that it was time to clean-up for supper.

 They had also, unfortunately, made a sizeable mess of the pitch. Wood sent the rest of the team off to put the borrowed broomsticks away, and called Harry over to help him pack up the equipment and the chalkboard. Harry felt guilty about leaving his team to clean up after him, but the twins would hear none of it, clucking and shooing him off in the direction of Wood like some tactics-lecture-suffering sacrifice or injured chick. The girls were already scooping up broomsticks, still giggling amongst themselves.

 “This was a good practice,” Wood declared happily, as he opened his personal Quidditch supplies bag (as opposed to his Quidditch uniform bag or the Hogwarts equipment trunk) and started to shove the large chalkboard into a space that, without magic, should not have been able to fit it. “We didn’t cover any of the items on my agenda – besides, of course, fitting you with a spare broom – but there’s plenty time for that. Harry, get that other side and lift, would you?”

 “Um, okay.”

 “We’ll have to make it up in future practices and perhaps condense the schedule I’ve outlined – that’s it, Harry, a little higher to fit the corner… yes, there we go, perfect – but team morale is important, too, isn’t it? Yes, I’d say we recovered nicely today. Perhaps with this improved mood, we’ll be able to cover my agenda at a faster rate! Gryffindor still has a chance, they'll see. Just push, Harry, it’s nearly in. Excellent!”

 With a rather horrified slurp-like sound, the chalkboard vanished into the depths of Wood’s supply bag, the mouth of which was now returning to a normal size. Wood kept talking enthusiastically, gesturing so wildly that he nearly hit himself in the face several times, as he bent down to place the rest of his set-out supplies. This equipment included but was not limited to: a box of chalk, floating hoops, Bludger targets, safety padding that had seen better days, pylons, and the pineapple.

 “Er,” Harry said.

 “– of course, you  _will_ need a better broom before our next game, but this will do for a few practices. You haven’t had the chance to glance at a Quidditch Quality Supplies catalogue recently, have you? I think you’ll want to look into the Bulgarian National Seeker’s previous broom of choice – all the teams have ordered Firebolts now, of course – it might be a bit more all-purpose than speed in ratio, but some sturdiness isn’t anything to scoff at with your dives. I’ll lend you that copy so you–”

 Harry benevolently decided that he could hardly retake the gift now, and it just wasn’t his problem if Wood’s detailed chalkboard schematics were ruined by rotting fruit. He glanced over at the rest of the team to see how they were doing with the brooms.

 “Uh,” Harry said. “Wood?”

 “– can read the in-depth article on it, and the opinions of various Seekers. I think you’d rather like Krum’s style, actually, his tactics are incredibly intense and just absolutely brilliant. You might find him inspiring. Sorry, Harry, did you say something?”

 There really wasn’t much to be said, so Harry just pointed a finger.

 Madam Hooch and Professor Sinistra had turned away for a few moments, apparently gossiping as they packed up chairs.

 Thus, no one had stopped the rest of their team from creating a raft out of all the spare broomsticks. Presumably there’d been some intention to “carry them efficiently”, but now Fred was swooning across the deck of their makeshift ship, which was hovering about three feet off the ground, while Alicia stood tall as “the Dread Pirate Spinnet” and loudly ordered the rest of her “wretched crew of scum and villainy” to “cast off to the second star on the right, and straight on till morning”!

Katie, giggling through hiccups (“Pick a story and stick to it!”), was pulling at the front while Angelina and George pushed from the back. Angelina and George looked a bit confused but they were laughing as well.

 Wood stood bolt upright. “Oh, for  _fu_ -” Harry looked up at his captain, who quickly finished, “- _fudge’s_ sake. ALICIA, FRED, GET DOWN! …They haven’t even  _built_ it properly. It’s all over the place.”

 With that last mutter, he sprinted off towards the team.

 Unfortunately for Alicia’s ship, apparently named the “ _HISPANIOLA_ ”, Wood’s shouting quickly attracted the attention of Madam Hooch and Professor Sinistra. Both teachers immediately rushed over to put an end to this before “someone breaks their bloody neck”! Madam Hooch was probably right about that danger, given that the rushed and makeshift ship hadn’t even been able to go in a straight line or keep a fixed height, but Harry was slightly (very) disappointed that he hadn’t gotten to have a go.

 Since Harry hadn’t been there to get involved, he was dismissed with an insistent wave by Wood, exempt from Madam Hooch’s impromptu lecture on the dangers of unstable flying. She quickly had all the upperclassmen looking guilty (with intermittent hiccups from Katie). Except for Wood, who looked like he was gearing up for a lecture of his own, possibly about the  _proper_ structural integrity of broom-rafts. Harry didn’t look back as he scurried off to change.

 He was supposed to meet Ron and Hermione for dinner and didn’t want to be late. Ron had written his mother about the article he’d mentioned on Sunday, about the werewolf woman who was thrown out of her home, and they were supposed to get a response soon. Post tended to arrive in the mornings, at breakfast, but sometimes it showed up at later meals in the day as well. Sometimes there were  _Evening Prophet_ newspaper issues and things, and not everyone made it to breakfast in the morning. Harry really wanted to know what had happened to her. They were all hoping she was alright.

 Harry showered and changed quickly into comfortable trousers and a t-shirt, shimmying into his Weasley jumper for warmth, then throwing his equipment back into his bag and hurrying out to finish helping with the clean-up. Fortunately, he’d managed to miss the lectures, but unfortunately, he was waved off from helping yet again.

 “Are you sure?” Harry called, anxiously.

 “Excuse you! Which one of us fought off a hundred dementors on Saturday?” Alicia shouted back, lugging the equipment trunk back to the shed with Katie under Madam Hooch’s watchful glare. Angelina and George shot her disapproving and uncertain looks respectively, their arms full of broomsticks, while Fred chortled.

 Harry also felt rather bemused. “Neither of us?”

 “Go on, Harry!” Katie said, hiccupping again. “We were doing this even before you got here!”

 Wood nodded, from where he was finishing packing up his bags and hefting them up. Harry imagined there had to be quite a lot of charms on those bags, else Wood was stronger than he thought. “And consider having a look at some of those catalogues, would you?”

 “Oliver!”

 Wood glanced at Angelina, confused. “…Yes?”

 Harry didn’t hear whatever was said next, as Professor Sinistra was walking up to him. She was a pretty, narrow-faced woman in her thirties, with dark brown skin and a penchant for long, complicated-looking dark braids, and also for fancy hats and robes. He liked her well-enough, as she was very kind and sometimes quietly funny, though he didn’t know her very well or have some deep passion for her class.

 “I would be happy to escort you back to the castle, Mister Potter,” she offered.

 While Harry didn’t enjoy the teachers watching over him like hawks, he appreciated Professor Sinistra’s straightforwardness about the subject when she joined Madam Hooch’s Quidditch supervision. 

 “No, it’s okay, I can wait for everyone else.”

 “Oh my… Harry,  _go!”_

 “Yeah, weren’t you waiting for a letter or something?”

 “I believe we have been dismissed,” Sinistra said bemusedly. “Shall we?”

 Reluctantly, Harry said goodbye to his team and joined Sinistra walking back to the castle. She didn’t ask him about Quidditch, or broomsticks, or dementors, or Sirius Black. Instead, she struck up conversation about what he thought about her Astronomy lesson yesterday night and if he had any questions about how celestial movements were often used in or related to ritual magic.

 Harry couldn’t come up with any immediate questions, but he told her he’d enjoyed the lesson. He didn’t mention that he’d had a bit of a nightmare right before, during an unplanned nap, which had dampened things a bit. He’d liked the examples she’d given, from more common rituals to silly anecdotes, and her small demonstration.

 They didn’t get any further in the conversation than that, however, before they happened upon two people walking towards the pitch. It was, oddly enough, Cedric Diggory and Percy Weasley. Percy was still in his school robes, his Head Boy badge ever gleaming on his chest, but Diggory was dressed in more casual clothing again, though he was wearing his prefect badge, which didn’t shine quite as brightly as Percy’s, and had a paper-wrapped parcel in his hands. They were talking about O.W.L. exams.

 At least, until Diggory caught a glimpse of Harry and cut-off mid-word to grin in brilliant greeting. “Potter!” His dark hair was dry and soft again, of course, though his freckled cheeks glowed in the November chill. “Just the person I was hoping to see!”

 Harry’s chest immediately did a very uncomfortable flop. Several times.

 “Diggory!” he greeted. He found himself smiling back with a suddenness and ease that made the jealous part of him, which was trying to wrangle some control over his heart, confused and unhappy. “And… Percy?”

 That seemed an… unlikely pair. 

 “We were just at a prefect meeting,” Diggory explained, “and he was nice enough to keep me company on the way down here. Just after doing me a favour, too.” He seemed completely oblivious to the redness of Percy’s ears or the way Percy’s chest puffed out, pleased. “Hello, Professor.”

 “Hello, Mister Diggory,” Sinistra said. “Mister Weasley.”

 “Professor,” Percy said, then hurried to explain himself. “It’s not just pleasure, I’m afraid. I came down here to be sure that Oliver – Wood, that is – remembered to end practice on time and return the chalkboard and other supplies he borrowed from the prefects’ meeting room. Though I was very glad to keep Diggory company, absolutely. Excellent company!”

 “Well, you too, and thanks again,” Diggory said. Then he glanced down at the small parcel in his arms, and smiled directly at Harry. “Professor, Weasley, would you mind if I had a quick word with Potter?”

 “Of course not!”

 “Not at all,” Sinistra agreed. “I will wait at the end of the path, Mister Potter, should you still wish to return to the castle.” She nodded to all of them and drifted off.

 “And I will go see about Oliver!” Percy didn’t manage the same sort of grace, he was too stiff and puffed-up, but he gave a bobbing nod of his own and strode decisively off into the Quidditch pitch with a fair amount of style nevertheless. “Always good to see you, Harry,” he said. “Goodbye, Diggory!”

 “Bye, Weasley! Thanks again!”

 “Anytime, Diggory!”

 Harry watched this awkwardly, acutely aware of the weight of his Quidditch bag, the tightness where his worn jumper was a touch too small, and how it was just him and Diggory now. After a final wave, Diggory turned a renewed smile down on Harry and Harry’s heart squished uncomfortably.

 “Good practice, Potter?”

 “Yeah. Pretty good.”

 “That’s good. It’s good to see you back in the air again, even though people seeing you fly definitely proves I only won by sheer dumb luck!” Diggory’s voice at the end was a fair mimicry of Professor McGonagall’s, and Harry sputtered into disbelieving laughter.

 “Does not!”

 On one hand, the jealous part of Harry was glad yet again that Diggory recognized how unfair the whole affair had been, though the complimentary nature of the remark gave Harry a feeling of warm discomfort. On the other hand, Diggory wasn’t a bad Seeker at all. He might have been built more like a Chaser or Beater, and not prone to fanciful dives, but he was a fifth-year and experienced and captain of his team. Harry didn’t like the way Diggory had said that, though he couldn’t put a finger on why.

 “Does too!” Diggory countered cheerfully. “But, on a more serious note… Did Wood actually schedule a practice not even a week after that match? Because I feel that I got the better end of the wand and  _I_ don’t want to get on a broom at least until after the holidays.”

 “Well… you’re gonna have to,” Harry pointed out, smiling back, somewhat unsure whether Diggory had forgotten that Hufflepuff was playing Ravenclaw in little more than a week.

 Gryffindor definitely hadn’t forgotten, especially not their captain. As Wood had said many times over the course of their practice: their chances of winning the Quidditch Cup depended heavily on Ravenclaw absolutely, mercilessly, horrifically flattening Hufflepuff. However, Harry didn’t want to come out and say this to Diggory’s face. Diggory might try to throw his match out of weird niceness or something if Harry did.

 “Oh, don’t remind me about that one,” Diggory said with an exaggerated wince. “You know Catriona McChesney has been making ‘I’m watching you, you worm’ gestures every time I see her?”

 Harry wasn’t familiar with the Ravenclaw captain. She was a seventh-year, for one, and in  _Ravenclaw,_ for two. He’d played against her – she was a Beater and, per Fred and George’s esteemed expertise, the worst sort of Beater at that: a  _clever_ one – but he’d never spoken to her besides a handshake at the end of the game.

 “I’m afraid to go to meals,” Diggory confided. His voice, however, had lost none of its cheer. “I can feel the heat of her glare every time I’m in the Great Hall, and I don’t think ‘crispy’ will be a good look on me.”

 The beginning of laughter was tickling at Harry’s throat, and it came out as a cough. “I think somebody would’ve made Wood into a campfire by now, if that was a danger.”

 Diggory blinked, then laughed. “Fair enough! I suppose I’ll have fair warning before I have to do my runner, then. Just be sure that you send me an owl before you break out the marshmallows, please, Potter?” Diggory shook his head, then muttered, “Really, can’t believe Wood has you out here already. When your next official match again?”

 “March,” Harry answered promptly.

 “Merlin. There’s no saving you now, is there, Potter? Looks like I got my act together just in time.”

 Harry cut off his own question as Diggory thrust the parcel he’d been holding towards him. It was wrapped in paper, tied with string, and about the size of Hermione’s average textbook, though clearly not as heavy. Staring at it offered no answers, so Harry brought the question back up again.

 “Uh-?” It didn’t come out well.

 Diggory’s smile dropped slightly. He waved the parcel a bit. “The chocolate, remember?”

 “Oh,” Harry said. “You… didn’t have to do that.”

 “I know,” Diggory replied, retracting the parcel slightly, before he held it out farther. “But I said I would, didn’t I? And it’s already done.” He grinned again, forcibly. “Now you have to save me from the horrible acne I’ll get if I eat more sweets than I already do, and fall into my trap of you having to buy  _me_ chocolate when you inevitably beat me next year.”

 There wasn’t much to do besides take the parcel, apparently filled with chocolate, and Harry felt awkward standing there with a gift he didn’t know how to accept. If he should accept it, even. The jealous part of him was having his heart flop wildly. It was very distracting as Harry tried to think. As was the part of his brain that sounded like Oliver Wood, which was irrationally sure the gift was poisoned.

 “You don’t know that,” Harry mumbled. His toes suddenly itched. Why did his toes itch?

 Diggory sighed over-dramatically. “I thought we covered this, Potter. You’ll just have to accept that I’ve outwitted you here. Mwahaha, and all that.” Then he dropped the air of performance and shrugged. “Look, those things were awful… the entire thing was unfair… and hey, if chocolate can help, I’ve gotta do something.”

 Harry looked down at the parcel in his hands and… supposed.

 “Besides, you can’t go on Hogsmeade trips, right? The Hufflepuff prefects do this thing where they organize ways to bring Hogsmeade back for the people who can’t go. Denying access to sweets is a grave injustice, you know.” Diggory grinned brightly, more genuinely. “Think of it as me infecting Gryffindor with a bit of busy-bodied badgering.”

 Harry immediately choked on a mix of laughter and disbelief. The only thing he could manage to say when he had air again was: “…That was awful!”

 “But you laughed!” Diggory pointed out, his grin broad and his nose crinkled in delight.

 Pushing a hand over his mouth, Harry forced that laughter back out of sight. He looked down at the parcel in his hand again, spotting a neat Honeydukes stamp on one side. “How did you get to Honeydukes?” The only people he knew who could get to Hogsmeade out of scheduled trips were Fred and George. “There wasn’t a trip.”

 “First rule of mustelids is that you must keep a lid on our secrets,” Diggory said, in the vein of reciting something. “No? Too obscure? Never mind. Students in seventh year are technically adults, so… I’m not sure how it works, actually. They let Professor Sprout know they need to pop down to Hogsmeade or something? Some sort of special permission; there’s a process to it... and rules. I just asked a seventh-year to do me a favour.”

 “Oh, well, um, thanks.”

 “No problem,” Diggory assured him. “Really, I just sat back and issued orders like a terrible tyrant.”

 Harry smiled despite himself, and the flopping in his chest. “Uh, sure.”

 “So! How’s Quidditch going? I’ve never tried it without a broomstick, but you said it was going well?”

 “I’m borrowing a Shooting Star from the shed,” Harry answered. He couldn’t quite hide the pang of grief at the loss of his Nimbus. It had been four days, but the loss still felt new. “Until I get a new broom.”

 “Yeah, sorry again about your broom, Potter.”

 Harry shrugged, even though the pull didn’t feel good. “You didn’t break it. Thanks, though.”

 An awkward silence came down between them then, and Harry regretted having spoken in bitterness. He was too conscious of his clammy fingers and wind-blown hair. He didn’t like the silence, but the conversation had been lost and Harry was certain he’d trip over himself if he tried to walk or talk. Why did he have to be like this in front of Diggory? Of all people?

 “I should probably get to dinner,” Diggory said finally. “Before Wood comes out and accuses me of spying on your team or trying to steal your secrets, or something suitably dastardly. As is befitting someone of my wickedness, of course.”

 How come no one had said Diggory was so unfairly  _weird?_ Harry stifled the flopping in his chest and the jealous part of him did some equivalent of sticking out a tongue. It twisted flutteringly.

 “Gryffindor and Hufflepuff aren’t playing again until next year,” Harry pointed out.

 “I like to plan ahead,” Diggory insisted cheerfully. “Although I just remembered that I didn’t tell my friends where I’d be, so I’ve got to do my runner before they start the hunt. See you around, Potter. Best of luck. If anyone needs it, it’s still definitely you.”

 “Thanks,” Harry said wryly. “Bye, Diggory.”

 Diggory turned and left, waving over his shoulder. He passed Professor Sinistra with a cheerful greeting, who returned it with a smile and nod, and made a brisk walk up towards the castle. Harry watched him go with a feeling he couldn’t name. His toes and arms itched. He vehemently squashed the flopping in his chest until it curdled away, then took a breath and walked over to Professor Sinistra.

 She didn’t ask him any questions about what had just happened, which was good because Harry didn’t have any answers. He couldn’t remember if he’d mentioned Diggory’s visit on Saturday to Hermione and Ron, but he knew he hadn’t told them about the hallway encounter on Sunday morning and  _definitely_ not the chocolate agreement that Harry had been mostly sure was just a bit of fun. On one hand, Harry didn’t know how to explain this to anyone and didn’t really want to, but on the other hand, he wanted desperately to tell them everything and have them explain everything that didn’t make sense to him. Which was, at the moment, more or less everything.

 “Ready, Mister Potter?” Sinistra said.

 “Yeah. Thanks.”

 They set off towards the castle together at a more sedate pace. Harry could see Diggory ahead of them, getting farther by the second, but didn’t see his team or Percy or Madam Hooch behind him yet. After a minute or so, Sinistra spoke.

 “If you don’t mind me asking, Mister Potter, what are you doing in your other classes? Anything interesting?” She smiled and explained wryly, “It’s been quite a while since I was in third year. I would hope the curriculum has changed from the one I remember.”

 “Oh, nothing much,” Harry said, surprised by the question, his fingers clenching on the parcel in his hands. He wracked his mind for a decent answer. Sinistra had asked about his classes and Harry’s mind seemed to conveniently forget everything about every class he was taking. He tried to just pick a class at random, but his unhelpful head had apparently forgotten what his classes were as well.

 “We’re learning about hinkypunks and other mischievous creatures in Defence,” he said finally.

 “Oh? That sounds interesting.”

 “Apparently they can get into people’s homes and gardens, or nearby parks and stuff. So, it’s useful to know how to deal with one – like if a boggart gets into your shed or attic.” Harry felt a bit silly telling a professor these things, but he thought it was neat such strange and dangerous creatures could be considered pests.

 It was a bit scary, but no more than pretty much everything about the magical world was, Harry thought. There were scarier and more mysterious things out there than hinkypunks. At least they were being taught to deal with hinkypunks and boggarts. Which, unlike vampires and hags and werewolves and things, weren’t  _people._

 A thought occurred to Harry, as he considered telling Professor Sinistra about the aborted lesson they’d had on werewolves and remembered the letter that might be waiting for him. Unfortunately, he hadn’t been sure how to bring up the whole “so werewolves are scary but seem to be normal people, so do they turn evil when they’re bitten or what” thing to a teacher, and the textbooks were full of wildly conflicting information according to Hermione. So, Harry hadn’t been able to get an answer for his wondering about how lycanthropy actually  _worked._

 “Professor, can I ask you a question?”

 “Of course.”

 “We had a short lesson on werewolves last week, when Professor Lupin was sick.”

 “…Oh?” Sinistra said.

 “So, they turn into werewolves every full moon? How does that _work_? You said,” Harry began hesitantly, “that celestial movements can affect spells. Like constellations and rituals and stuff. But how does the moon affect a curse?”

 “Oh,” Sinistra said again, very differently to how she’d said it before. “That’s a very good question, Mister Potter. I don’t believe anyone’s asked me that before. Questions like that are what many of my colleagues spend years studying. Most agree that it effects the curse depends on the strain of lycanthropy.”

 Harry fumbled to rephrase his question. “No, I mean, how does the  _moon_ make the curse work?”

 “Do you remember what I said yesterday about the cycle of a lasting or passive spell?” Sinistra asked. As they walked, she gave a summary of her lecture from yesterday, focusing more on the movements of the moon and how it had historically been tied to curse magic and magical diseases.

 Essentially, long-term curse magic when tied to the rotation or orbit of the Earth, the sun, or the orbit or appearance of the moon could generally be made to last longer, be more powerful, and be more focused. Exactly how, Sinistra said with solemn apology, was for the advanced classes. Lycanthropy’s infamous transformation appeared to be closely tied to full moons and moonlight, although exactly how was still a matter of study and debate.

  “Long-distance travel has been known to affect the pattern of the curse and cause incidents,” Sinistra noted at the end of her explanation, at once as calm as ever and more excited than Harry had ever seen her. “There was a recent paper on the subject that was fascinating.”

 They had reached the castle now, where students were bustling around the halls, unbuttoning the tops of their robes and chatting happily as they made their way to dinner. Harry wanted to keep listening to SInistra, but he was tired and having trouble keeping up with the finer details. He also had to ditch his Quidditch bag and the parcel of chocolate, unless he wanted to face Ron and Hermione interrogation in front of the entire Gryffindor table. He was probably going to be late to meet Ron and Hermione anyway. He looked up, ready to make his reluctant and relieved excuses.

 “I’ve collected several papers and books on lycanthropy, and I do lend students parts of my personal collection for private study, if you would like to look further into the subject,” Sinistra said, with a knowing smile. “Thank you for accompanying me back to the castle, Mister Potter.”

 “Thanks for answering my question,” Harry answered. “Bye, professor.”

 “Goodbye,” Sinistra said.

 Harry turned to leave, noticing that Professor Sinistra was accosted by an older student with an open textbook in hand before she’d gotten very far. They looked like a seventh-year, and sounded like one with the high-pitched and panicked tone.

 He couldn’t wait to tell Hermione and Ron what Sinistra had told him. Hermione had certainly seemed to find all that Astronomy stuff interesting yesterday, so she'd probably love to have this to look into.

 Hopefully Ron’s mother had written back. Asking a werewolf directly would probably be the easiest way to go about all of this, Harry mused, as he hurried up towards Gryffindor Tower. Though, if Mrs. Weasley hadn’t written back, they did have Defence tomorrow, and what better teacher to ask questions about dangerous creatures? They could always just ask Professor Lupin. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hmm... I had things to say. Let me review this and see if I can remember them. 
> 
> 1) I really enjoyed writing Gryffindor Quidditch Team shenanigans. I tried to give the Chasers distinct personalities, in that Katie is younger and bubblier, Alicia is witty and mischievous, and Angelina is responsible up until someone dares her to do a thing. I'm also, I think, going to try and give Fred and George their differences. (I can't remember what canon is like for all of these characters, so I'm just going to make a lot of it up.) 
> 
> 2) I don't know if it was clear, but it was Percy who did Cedric the Hogsmeade favor. Also, it is one of my favorite HP things to remember that Percy Weasley and Oliver Wood were in the same year. Their poor roommates. 
> 
> 3) For Sinistra, I wanted to create a professor that was kind but distant, and more interested in her subject and older students who were interested in the advanced studies of her subject. I also wanted to give, idk, something a bit more to Astronomy for wizards. They made kids take it for five years, after all. Sinistra might show up again, but probably not in so large a role. I also imagine Sinistra doesn't have as many classes as the core professors, so she'd be free to take tea with Madam Hooch. (Madam Hooch, btw, definitely supervises most Quidditch practices and pick-up games, alongside teaching flying lessons and probably running several extracurriculars.) 
> 
> 4) Poor Cedric Diggory, who really is trying to be nice and doesn't know he's coming across as extremely flirty. I think what I'm going for with Cedric is a kid who's very good at stuff and fairly popular, but is also kind of weird and has "fake-it-until-you-make-it" confidence and feels a lot of pressure at being put on a pedestal and expected to overachieve. What I've been trying to get at with this is that Cedric genuinely feels bad and wants to make it up to Harry, and thinks Harry is actually cool. Harry just seems to _get it_. This kid fights trolls and faces dementors and defeated Voldemort, and appears to shrug a lot of it off. Have you ever tried to interact with someone much younger than you who is way cooler and seems more put-together than you are? It's awkward pretty much no matter what you do. Cedric is described in canon as "strong but silent", but I wanted to put together a slightly different Cedric Diggory, especially when it's just been him and Harry so far. 
> 
> 5) I think the Grim is next. Before Harry's Defense class tomorrow. 
> 
> 6) This was pretty much fun, fluffy filler. Good night.


	7. The Going to the Dog's

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this chapter is still kind of rough. I'm about to board my third of three flights and then I'm going to be booked solid with RL projects for a week and a half. So, I'll revisit this sometime around Saturday next week, but for now... I want to share this.

 Because Harry was only a measly third-year, he had to stand impatiently off to the side as a crowd of older Gryffindors and Ravenclaws trampled their way down the stairs to dinner, cackling loudly and braying at each other about the apparently gruesome results of their latest Arithmancy test. He knew Wood would never forgive him if Gryffindor’s Seeker was lost under the long legs and large feet of a stampede of upperclassmen who refused to look down.

 Contrary to many of the bad jokes that sometimes made the rounds of Gryffindor Tower, Harry did have some survival instincts.

 It was while waiting, of the corner of his eye, down a fourth floor hallway, that Harry saw a strange flash of movement. He’d have thought it was one of Hogwarts’ many cats – a pet or a stray – but it was much too large for that. Crookshanks, though debatably a cat, was the biggest beast about by far, and Hermione’s beloved pet wasn’t half so big or so dark.  

 Harry shoved the parcel of chocolate into his Quidditch bag. The laughter of the upperclassmen moved away down the stairs to dinner. Then, once they were gone, Harry stepped forward to peer curiously down the hallway, away from the stairwell and its portraits. Clutching his bag tightly and carefully pulling his wand from his pocket, he squinted down the small corridor, looking for a strange creature among the suits of armour, the tapestries, thin windows, and the flickering orange torches.

 There. Near one of the suits of armour, Harry thought he could see a great shadow that couldn’t have been there naturally, with two gleaming eyes looking right at him.

 It moved, suddenly growing even larger, and Harry quickly raised his wand, stumbling over his own feet to move backwards. He thought he could see teeth, large and sharp. The stairwell was not so far away, he thought, and people were still moving about, and he’d always been a very good runner. The shadow-

 The shadow barked. Then it rolled over and its tongue lolled out.

 “Oh… it’s you,” Harry said, and tried to stop his heart from battering its way out of his chest.

 It was the Grim, the supposed fierce spectre of death, but also the great black dog from the hospital wing and kitchens that Harry had almost convinced himself had been some strange dream. It was just as skinny as it had been before, but not quite as dirty, as though it had taken a quick bath in the Great Lake. It grinned at him, upside-down, legs in the air, and its tail thwapped several times against the stone floor. It barked again.

 “Shhh! You’ll get caught if you do that!” Harry hurried forward, tucking his wand back into his pocket. It hadn’t been a loud bark, but the sound still echoed down the corridor. He warily knelt next to the dog, hands hovering over its fur, and scolded it. “Filch’ll throw you out of the castle or something.”

 The Grim snorted and rolled back over. It panted up at Harry, ears perked up, tail wagging merrily, apparently completely unaware of the dangers of trotting about the castle as it pleased.

 “He’d chain up students and whip them if he could,” Harry warned it, very seriously. “He’d probably do the same to dogs. Or worse. He’d probably think you’d eat Mrs. Norris. He threatened some awful things when he’d thought I petrified her last year.”

 The Grim snorted again and tilted its head, but still grinned up at him carelessly.

 “Well, you can’t say I didn’t warn you,” Harry said firmly. Then, after another few seconds of staring at each other, Harry reached very slowly out towards the dog’s head to pat it.

 Much like before, the Grim didn’t mind at all. In fact, the enormous, shadowy dog scooted forward keenly and gently bumped the top of its head against Harry’s hand in encouragement. Harry first patted it gently, but was soon scratching hard behind the ears and rubbing at the neck just like he might do for Fang. The Grim’s tail thumped a quick beat against the stone floors and it made happy little growls, until it couldn’t take it anymore and moved forward to snuffle and lick excitedly at Harry’s face as he laughed and tumbled over.

 “Get off, you silly dog!” Harry pushed the Grim away laughingly, before it could crawl into his lap and squish him.

 It was so big that Harry’s push only worked because it decided to listen, ears at attention, tail wriggling, still shivering with excitement. It couldn’t help but still bump its cold nose against Harry’s own and give one last, affectionate lick as Harry pulled himself to his feet.

 Harry patted it on the back and grinned down as it learned heavily against his legs. He was very glad to see the Grim again – this stray dog Grim and not the omen Grim that’d been haunting him for months. He wondered if Professor Trelawney had ever imagined such a friendly spectre of death.

 Harry interrupted his own thoughts when he noticed again how skinny the Grim still was, under all that dark fur and toothy grinning. He frowned. It was far too thin for such a large dog.

 “Did you eat at all since last time?” Harry wondered.

 The Grim whined and Harry scratched empathetically behind its ears. There really was nothing worse than going hungry. There had to be a way that all of Hogwarts’ resident animals were fed, but maybe they only fed the official pets and tried to shoo off the strays. Harry had never thought about it.

 “Did you get in trouble with the house elves again?”

 Again, the Grim whined and stared up with pleading eyes. Harry thought he saw it shake its head a little, in what seemed like a very un-dog-like gesture. Harry wouldn’t really know, though. Hedwig sometimes seemed to nod or shake her head when he was talking to her, but Harry had sometimes had the sneaking suspicion she was humouring him more than anything else.

 “Sorry, but I don’t have any food with me,” Harry explained, as the Grim started snuffling around Harry’s pockets curiously, then hungrily as it seemed to smell something. Harry remembered the parcel of chocolate that Diggory had given him and hurried pushed its snout away, backing up. “Sorry! I mean, I’ve got chocolate, but you’re not allowed to eat that.”

 Aunt Marge had actually yelled at Dudley once, when one of her dogs had gotten into one of Harry’s cousin’s many stashes of sweets, and Harry had gotten yelled at too, just to be sure, even though Harry had never had any sweets. Chocolate was poison to dogs, apparently, no matter how keen they seemed on eating it. Besides that, Harry also didn’t want to give up Honeydukes chocolate, or to have to tell Diggory that Harry had let his gift be eaten by a dog that resembled a death omen.

 The Grim whined again and poked forward, and Harry stepped back again.

 “No,” Harry said firmly, and immediately felt badly when the Grim’s ears drooped. “Look, I have to get to dinner. Ron and Hermione are expecting me. But I’ll come find you right after, okay? We can go to the kitchens again? Or I can get you something else – something that’s good for you.”

 The Grim’s ears perked up again, its tail swinging slowly, and Harry smiled relievedly back. Then, they both froze as footsteps and laughter coming quickly down the nearby staircase reached them. Harry glanced over his shoulder and say nothing yet, but when he looked back, the Grim was already shrinking away. For such a frightening-looking dog, it looked a second away from turning tail and running, just like it had from Diggory only days before.

 “After dinner, by the kitchens,” Harry promised urgently.

 He hoped it wasn’t his imagination that the Grim nodded slightly, before it turned tail and ran down the castle corridor. The great shadow seemed to turn the corner just as the conversation and footsteps came level with the corridor, and stopped just behind him.

 “Potter?” someone called curiously.

 Harry turned quickly, wondering how to explain away standing alone in a small corridor, clearly not doing anything or headed anywhere. He didn’t get very far in his wondering, too surprised to see Ravenclaw’s Seeker, Cho Chang, and one of her friends looking at him curiously.

 “Chang,” he said. “Um, hi.”

 Cho Chang was a fourth-year and very pretty, with long, dark hair and a warm smile that went all the way up to her eyes, and everyone said she was very smart and very nice too. Harry had never spoken to her before, besides possibly passing handshakes after a Quidditch match, which didn’t count. But it wasn’t that he didn’t want to or lacked the courage, exactly, it was just that the opportunity had never come up, and Harry had never actually found anything to say, much less anything worth starting a conversation over. 

 She’d never tried to talk to him before either.

 He didn’t even know the name of the friend standing next to her, a girl with curly, reddish-blonde hair, spots, and an anxious expression. The only thing he knew for sure about Chang’s friend was that she was also a Ravenclaw and didn’t play Quidditch. Harry held his Quidditch bag tighter and shuffled his feet under their curious stares.

 “What are you doing?” Chang said.

 “I, um, thought I saw my friend’s cat?” Harry said. “He’s not supposed to be out of Gryffindor Tower.” This was a lie; as far as Harry could tell, much like Hedwig, Crookshanks went pretty much where he pleased, so Harry explained further: “He’s sick.”

 “Oh, no,” Chang said sympathetically. “I hope he gets better soon. Do you need help looking?”

 “No! That’s okay, it wasn’t him. I think it was one of the stray cats. Thanks, though.”

 Chang smiled, and Harry poor, weary chest flopped again.

 “Well, see you around, Potter,” she said, waving, and let her friend drag her along.

 “See you,” said Harry weakly, raising a hand in a poor excuse for an answering wave. He didn’t lower it again until Cho Chang and her friend were gone, their footsteps disappearing down the stairs.

 He stared after them for several seconds, before he realized that Ron and Hermione were surely wondering where he was by now. There was nearly no hope of him avoiding any uncomfortable questions now, but he still had to try. With one last glance down the empty corridor, the flickering torches revealing no tip or tail of unnatural shadows, Harry resumed hurrying up the staircases to Gryffindor Tower. 

 

~

 

 Dinner had begun by the time he finally made it back downstairs, free of any other meetings with Seekers from other teams, deathly dogs, or stampeding upperclassmen. Ron and Hermione were waiting for him at Gryffindor table and waved him over excitedly once he spotted them. Harry finished telling a questioning Lee that Angelina and the twins had been held up by Madam Hooch, and quickly excused himself to join his friends, where Ron was clutching an unopened letter tightly.

 “Mum wrote back!” Ron said, once Harry sat down next to him. Hermione was on Ron’s other side and they both already had plates of food in front of them, but they’d barely touched them, which wasn’t particularly strange for Hermione but definitely odd for Ron.

 “We were waiting to open it until you got here,” Hermione assured him.

 “What are you waiting for now?” Harry said eagerly. “Open it!”

 Ron opened the letter, and Harry and Hermione both leaned in to read it with him.

 “Oh, she hasn’t found the article,” Ron said.

 Harry and Hermione both drooped slightly in disappointment, but Hermione was still reading ahead, her eyes flicking from line to line at a ridiculous speed. Harry and Ron followed at a slower pace. That the article hadn’t been found was only the first line of a letter too long not to contain anything else of interest. There had to be more than Ron’s mum asking after him and his siblings.

 Molly Weasley didn’t know  _why_ her son wanted an old article about werewolves so badly, in the disbelieving phrasing of a woman who hadn’t at all bought Ron’s excuse of research for an essay on werewolves, but she’d gone looking anyway. Unfortunately, she hadn’t been able to find a copy about the house, and remembered that article and the incident only very vaguely. So, Mrs. Weasley had packed up some treats and gone to ask around the neighbourhood.

 “Looks like Diggory’s been bragging,” Ron said unhappily. “The git.”

 Confused, Harry glanced towards Hufflepuff table, where Diggory had his back to them and was talking quietly with some friends. That didn’t seem like Diggory at all. The Hufflepuff captain wouldn’t buy Harry an apology gift and then turn around and brag about winning their match, would he?

 “How do you think?”

 Ron elbowed Harry and gestured towards the next paragraph of the letter. “Here, look. Right there.”

 Mrs. Weasley recounted an afternoon with Mrs. Diggory, the mother of their Diggory, who apparently lived very close nearby to the Burrow. Mrs. Weasley said that Mrs. Diggory says  _her son_ told her  _all about_ what happened at the Quidditch match – unlike certain  _other sons,_ who didn’t write their mothers nearly enough – and to wish Harry all the best and a swift recovery.

 Underneath that was a long paragraph directly from Mrs. Weasley about how _Percy_  had written her and told her all about those awful dementors and the outrageous things they’d done at the Quidditch match. Also: about how Ron really had to write her when things like this happened, about how she was mad as a dragon at the Ministry, about how she was glad that Dumbledore was stepping up and telling them off and keeping everyone safe, and about how she also wished Harry all the best and a swift recovery.

 She’d be writing some very angry letters, she assured them, as soon as she figured out who to write them to.

 There was also a note directly to Harry, actually, as though Molly Weasley had known Harry would be reading as well or trusted her son to pass the message along. Mrs. Weasley was apparently very glad he was alright and was very sorry about his broomstick, because she knew how important it had been to him.

 Harry smiled at the words.

 “That’s not what it says, Ron,” Hermione said.

 “Yeah, well, not  _explicitly._ It’s in the under-text – that reading under the lines stuff, like you were saying we had to do with the werewolves books yesterday. Diggory was definitely bragging.”

 “ _Sub-_ text,” Hermione corrected. “Reading  _between_ the lines. And I don’t see it.”

 Harry remembered here and now that he’d actually never told Ron and Hermione about any of his meetings with Diggory, and there’d been three of them now. He didn’t think Diggory would brag about the match, especially when he’d argued for a rematch and bought Harry Honeydukes chocolates just because he’d felt so badly about the whole thing. But Harry didn’t know how to explain this to Ron and Hermione without explaining everything, which he wanted to do but also didn’t.

 Something about the fact Diggory had talked about Harry to his mother made Harry’s chest flop uncomfortably again. A feeling that Harry felt was getting entirely out of hand and couldn’t possibly be healthy. But it made his cheeks feel hot whenever he tried to figure it out.

 “He offered Wood the chance to replay the match,” Harry pointed out quickly, before this devolve into a longer, bloodier argument. “He was probably just telling her what happened. Ron, you’re crumpling the rest of the letter, I can’t read the rest.”

 “Oh, shit, sorry.”

 The letter continued, and revealed that Mrs. Weasley had been caught by one of Mrs. Diggory’s distant neighbours on her way to the nearby village: a Mr. Lovegood, who was a Weasley family acquaintance and the editor of a magazine called The Quibbler.

 Mr. Lovegood had claimed to know of the precise incident that Mrs. Weasley had been asking after. So, Mr. Lovegood had invited Mrs. Weasley over for tea and provided her with an article from his own magazine, which rather seemed to Mrs. Weasley like someone had tried to write an article on the subject but swiftly gotten off-subject into whether the Ministry was hiding a cure for lycanthropy and why. The Quibbler was apparently of the opinion the Ministry was doing this, and had been for decades.

 “Are they?” Harry wondered.

 Hermione’s frown somehow deepened. “I don’t  _think_ so,” she said.

 Mrs. Weasley had, of course, elected  _not_ to pass this article along to her son. She had been too tired after this tea to make it to the village, where she had planned to ask Mrs. Goldberry, who taught at the local wizarding school and did scrapbooking, about the article. But, Mr. Lovegood’s article had at least contained the name of the wizard who’d thrown his sister-in-law out of the house for being a secret werewolf, and Mrs. Weasley now remembered for certain this had indeed been the right name: a Mr. Warrington.

 She hoped this was enough, but she would keep looking for the article if Ron really so desperately needed a copy for this “essay” of his.

 “Warrington?” Harry said. He jabbed a thumb over his back in the direction of the Slytherin table on the other side of the Great Hall, and said more quietly, “As in…  _Quidditch_ Warrington?”

 “Probably his son or nephew or something,” Ron whispered. “It wouldn’t surprise me one bit. They’re both the same sort of pureblood knobheads.”

 Harry looked over his shoulder properly and tried to spot their Warrington, as though glaring at him from across the hall would solve their latest mystery. Unfortunately, this was a little tricky, because he didn’t know where Warrington usually sat. He was “ _Quidditch_ Warrington” because this where Harry knew him from, as well as the only thing Harry knew about him.

 “Who’s ' _Quidditch_ Warrington'?” Hermione said.

 “That big Chaser on the Slytherin team, the one who kind of looks like a sloth,” Ron explained, turning to help Harry scan the Slytherin table. “He’s a sixth or seventh-year, I think?”

 “There he is,” Harry said, and pointed towards the boy in question.

 Warrington – Harry didn’t know his first name, so "Quidditch" had to do – was a tall upperclassman, with droopy eyes and chin-length brown hair, who was like a battering ram on a broom and could easily pick up a Quaffle one-handedly. He was eating at the end of Slytherin table nearest to the teachers, far away from Malfoy and his cronies, sitting with a bunch of other upperclassmen. He did, upon some reflection, look a bit like a sloth.

 “Well?” Hermione said, after several seconds of staring. “Should we go ask him?”

 “Are you  _nuts_?” Ron said, aghast, and pulled them all around again. “We can’t just go up to some Slytherin seventh-year and ask him if his pureblood  _bigwig_  relative threw some other relative out of the house for being a bloody werewolf! Even if he didn’t curse us and then  _step on us_  for asking, he’d  _never_ talk to us about it! Pureblood families take disownments  _seriously!_ He’d probably pretend the whole thing never even happened! They’re nuts about it.”

 “I’m not trying  _anything_ with Polyjuice again,” Harry vetoed quickly. “That did  _not_ work.”

 Hermione huffed indignantly.

  “We could get someone else to ask him?” Ron suggested, before Hermione could begin to argue the technicalities of whether the Polyjuice plan in their second year had worked.

 While the potion itself and the plan had somehow worked, Harry had no desire to do it again. It had taken forever and tasted awful, even if it had been successful, apart from how Hermione had been partially transformed into a cat. He had doubts they’d succeed again. For one point, while Malfoy was incapable of  _shutting up,_ Harry wasn’t sure he’d ever heard Warrington say  _anything._

 Then Ron shook his head. “No, same problem.”

 “I want this article your mum’s talking about,” Hermione said firmly.

 “Which one?”

 Hermione gave them both a dirty look, but then said, “Both of them. I still want to read the first one, and,” she added primly, “I want to see what the second one has to say, even if it turns out to be ridiculous and wrong. I want more perspectives on what people think about werewolves.”

 Ron shrugged. “I’ll write Mum back asking, I guess.”

 The rest of the letter devolved into Mrs. Weasley talking about minor happenings around home and the neighbourhood, and with some of Ron’s many cousins. There was a bit about hoping that Percy wasn’t letting himself be overstressed, a few lines encouraging them to keep an eye on Fred and George, and some more encouraging Ron to check on Ginny and make sure she was “doing  _well_ this year.”

 “Blimey,” Ron said, squinting at the letter. “It’s like she thinks I’m  _Bill._  I don’t have any say over what Gred and Forge do. They’d laugh me out of school if I tried.” Then he looked up, past the returned twins now cackling wickedly over something with Lee, towards another bright red head and called loudly, “Oi, Ginny! Write Mum back already!”

 Ginny leaned back, scowled at her brother, then stuck out her tongue and crossed her eyes at him.

 “Brat,” Ron mouthed.

 Ginny mouthed something back that looked much ruder, before she turned up her nose and went back to her conversation with a group of second-years. Not all of them were Gryffindors, either. Colin Creevey was among them and leaned forward to say something that made Ginny laugh loudly. She looked entirely unlike the scared, filthy, still girl who had been slowly turning cold on the wet stone.  

 “Mum’s been getting antsy if Gin doesn’t write her at least twice a week,” Ron explained. “After with… well… what happened last year.”

 Harry put a hand over his twinging arm. “Yeah.”

 “Yeah,” Ron echoed.

 Harry looked back to the letter. “Is there anything else?”

 “Nah, not really,” Ron said, but handed it over for Harry to read himself.

 Harry went right to the end up the letter, which only devolved further into reminding Ron to listen to the teachers and stay safe, and for all his friends to do the same. A repeat of her earlier letters, after the incident with the Fat Lady. As though Hogwarts hadn’t increased all its security since the incident, Mrs. Weasley seemed to be under the impression that they were going to go wandering off and bump into Sirius Black around the first corner. Or, not surprisingly but more inexplicably, like they’d get it into their heads to go looking for an incredibly dangerous, escaped mass-murderer.

 “Huh,” Harry said, though he was touched by Mrs. Weasley worrying about him, and put the letter down so he could finally help himself to some dinner. Ron had started eating again and now Harry was very hungry too. It had been a long time since lunch.

 Though, he could eat alongside the Grim again, since he had promised to meet it afterwards.

 “We should find out more about Warrington,” Hermione suggested.

 “Which one?”

 “Both of them,” she said. “Either of them. Does it matter?”

 “Well, kinda,” Ron said.

 Hermione rolled her eyes. “I’ll see if I can find anything about Mr. Warrington and the family, while I’m doing the rest of my research. After you write back to your mum for both the articles, Ron, you two should try and find out more about ' _Quidditch_ Warrington.'”

 “Well, I guess he’s probably not in many of your books yet,” Ron said thoughtfully. “’Specially since this whole thing only happened last year.”

 An idea dawned on Harry in the middle of him reaching across the table. “If this only happened last year…” he said slowly, as he pulled back, “even if  _we_ didn’t hear about it, I bet someone did. Like, one of Warrington’s –  _Quidditch_ Warrington’s – friends or some other people in the same year. Especially if it made the news.”

 “I could ask Percy,” Ron said. “They’re in the same year, right?”

 “How would I know?”

 Ron was already looking for his brother up and down Gryffindor table. “Where is he? I haven’t seen him all supper, actually. Normally he does that weird patrol-y thing between tables, y’know, like he thinks he’s a teacher.” Ron looked down the table again. “George, have you seen Percy?”

 George waved a hand across the hall. “Eating at Ravenclaw table with his  _girlfriend_.”

 “And not leaning over our shoulder for once,” Fred added. “Lee, what if we-?”

 George then looked up towards Ravenclaw table, in the sneaky way of someone assigned the job of lookout, and also to point towards their brother for Ron. However, George’s expression quickly changed from bored to slightly alarmed.

 “Oh,” he said, and made a face. “Oh, that doesn’t look good.”

 Fred and Lee paused, then turned around in the same movement. Harry, Ron, and Hermione all turned and followed their gaze to Ravenclaw table next to them, at the end closest to the teachers. Since Ron and George had been speaking over the several other people between them, including most of the Gryffindor third-years, fourth-years, and fifth-years, several other curious people turned to look too. Not too far past the twins, Ginny stood up for a better view.

 Percy Weasley and Penelope Clearwater appeared to be having an argument. It was a mostly hushed argument, Harry couldn’t make out all the words, but they were speaking quickly and their expressions were intense and furious. There were some very dramatic, barely restrained hand gestures happening there. As George had said, it didn’t look good, especially since it looked like Penelope Clearwater was trying to have an argument and that Percy was puffing himself up and arguing intensely about not having an argument, and this was only making Penelope angrier.

 Harry looked past Percy and Penelope to the head table, not far behind them, where several of the teachers also seemed to agree with George’s assessment. McGonagall was watching them with her lips pressed flat, Lupin with his brows raised high and a hand over his mouth, and Flitwick wasn’t watching them at all and but was doing a very poor job of suddenly finding the ceiling very interesting.

 The argument came to a very short end when Penelope Clearwater stood up, jostling the tableware, grabbed her bookbag, and walked away without another word. She took the main doors, so she walked all the long way between the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw tables, with her head held high and blotchy eyes. Percy was left standing alone at Ravenclaw table, staring after her, before he realized what had happened, and that a bunch of people were looking at him, and hurried after her at a brisk walk.

 “Ooh,” Fred said with a playful wince, and George made another chagrined face.

 “Well, there goes that plan,” Ron said, turning back around. “Going near Percy for anything’ll be impossible now. I’m not getting involved in that.” He shook his head knowingly. “It wasn’t a good plan to begin with; he would’ve wanted to know why we were asking.”

 This wasn’t the first time the Great Hall had been the setting for a couple’s argument, but it was the first time that Harry had actually known the couple, and what had always been awkward had somehow just been made even worse. At least it hadn’t been a full-on public break-up, and nobody had drawn their wands this time. The upper-years, Harry had quickly figured out (from skirting the occasional disaster himself if not from accidentally overhearing the constant and rampant gossip), were prone to melodrama and other strange behaviours.

 “Maybe we can ask someone else,” Harry said weakly.

 “Anyone else,” Ron agreed, then qualified: “Except Warrington.”

 “You could  _also_ help me with the rest of my research,” Hermione added, as she picked at her food. “At this point,  _anything_ to do with werewolves would help. I can’t believe the Hogwarts Library has so little on werewolves, and so little variety! I asked Madam Pince about it this morning and-” Hermione leaned in to deliver the next bit of scandal in a whisper. “-she said the majority of the Board of Governors considers werewolves to be ‘inappropriate material’ for schoolchildren!”

 “What?” Ron said. “On what grounds? They’d have to confiscate half the damn library!”

 Harry, who was intensely familiar with strict and unreasonable opinions on what was “appropriate,” wasn’t surprised. When someone wouldn’t let you even say “magic” for ten years of your life, he’d learned, it was probably because there was something they didn’t want you to know.

 “Lucius Malfoy is on the Board of Governors,” Harry pointed out quietly.

 “Oh, right, that bastard,” Ron said. He jabbed his fork into a potato and shoved the entire thing in his mouth, and muttered, “Give the twins five fucking minutes and they’d show him inappropriate with any subject.”

 Hermione nodded rightly. “Madam Pince implied they might have had more books on werewolves even only ten years ago. I can’t believe- I just-“ She dropped her fork and curled her hands tight around the edge of the table. “They might have gotten rid of  _perfectly good_ books –  _better_ books – just because  _Lucius Malfoy-_ ” This name came out as a near hiss. “-didn’t like what they said!”

 Hermione looked just about ready to walk over to the other side of the hall and punch the other Malfoy in the face. Since Harry had been feeling like this all week, if not longer, if not for years at this point, he didn’t think he’d stop her if she tried. However, he did want her to feel better.

 “They might not have gotten rid of them,” Harry said. “They kept that potions book, after all, and some of that stuff was just as gory as anything about werewolves could be, if not worse. So… maybe they’re in the Restricted Section. I can’t imagine Madam Pince willingly getting rid of a book, no matter who told her to, even if she’s not supposed to have kept it.”

 Hermione stiffened as she considered this, then she brightened. “That’s true. After all,  _Moste Potente Potions_ had a potion meant to turn animals inside-out.”

 “What,” said Harry.

 “Ew,” said Ron, and shoved another forkful of food into his mouth.

 “It’s for abattoirs,” Hermione said defensively. “You know, like, butchers and people who harvest potion ingredients. You need to have a special license from the Ministry to legally brew it, because it… has been used in a… few gruesome murders.” She trailed off awkwardly.

 “Well, too bad we don’t have Lockhart around anymore to get stuff out of the Restricted Section easy anymore,” Ron said. “He did try to… well… yeah, but before that he was sorta useful. Almost.”

 Harry thought back to the Chamber of Secrets, where Lockhart probably would have been most useful as bait, even before the backfiring Obliviation attempt. He shivered slightly at the memory of the betrayal, at being on the end of a teacher’s wand  _again,_ the rockslide, and then… the basilisk, and also having to assist in Lockhart’s awful, self-centred book re-enactments in class.

 “For some stuff,” Harry allowed.

 “I wonder where he is now,” Ron said.

 They all thought about it for a moment, and Harry thought about other teachers they could ask about it. Unfortunately, unlike Lockhart who hadn’t bothered to care, all of the other teachers would probably actually want to know what they were doing. He didn’t have a problem stealing from the Restricted Section, but they’d probably have to ask the twins for tips this time around.

 “Hey,” Harry said. “We could ask Professor Sinistra.”

 “Professor Sinistra?” Hermione repeated.

 “Yeah, I asked her a bit about werewolves on the way up from Quidditch practice. She walked me back, because they’re paranoid about Sirius Black and all. You know how she and Madam Hooch have tea during practice sometimes, right?”

 At Ron’s nod and Hermione’s slightly more dubious nod, Harry continued, “I wanted to know how the moon makes the curse work, and I couldn’t follow all of it, but she said she’s ‘collected several papers and books on lycanthropy’ and that she lends students parts of her collection for private study if they’re interested in a subject. Maybe we could ask her about it.”

 Ron and Hermione didn’t look as enthused as Harry, and he understood why. None of them knew Sinistra that well, even though they’d had her as a teacher for years, but she’d seemed nice enough during the walk back and she’d already offered. She already knew Harry was curious.

 “If she says no, maybe we can ask Lupin,” Harry said. “Or just ask the twins.”

 It would probably be more useful just to go straight to the twins and learn how to lift from the Restricted Section properly. Harry preferred that option, now that he thought about it. Then they’d never have to wait on a teacher or get stuck by a teacher saying no again, and could just pick up whatever books they wanted whenever.

 “No… that might work,” Hermione said slowly. “Professors Babbling and Vector do the same thing, with the rarer Ancient Runes and Arithmancy texts, just usually only to upper-years – like people who are taking their O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s. I think I remember Tony Goldstein saying something about the list of other teachers that do it too, but don’t always advertise it to the lower years. I’ll ask him about it tomorrow afternoon.”

 Hermione turned around, perhaps to look for Goldstein, and Harry looked up to Sinistra at the head table. She was sitting on the far side of the table, nearer to Ravenclaw and Slytherin tables, with Vector, the Arithmancy teacher, to the right of her and Snape to the left. He squinted.

 “Is... Does it look to you like Professor Sinistra is arguing with Snape?”

 For this, Ron stopped eating and looked up. “Shit. Mate, I think you’re right.”

 It was a lot more subtle than Percy and Penelope, but it was unmistakable. Snape was wearing a scowl that he usually reserved for Harry or Neville, and serene Professor Sinistra was frowning right back. Harry thought the two of them usually sat in the same area, but he’d never seen them exchange words before, and now they were having a very intense, hushed, and unhappy conversation.

 Harry couldn’t hear what they were saying, but the usually stern Professor Vector clearly could, and she looked alarmed. As did Babbling, the Ancient Runes teacher, on Vector’s other side. 

 The argument continued, and Vector leaned in to say something to Sinistra, who rebuffed her without breaking her glare towards Snape. Snape’s scowl deepened and twisted, and he said something else, before he rose suddenly from the table and swept out the side door nearest to that end of the head table.

 Vector tried to say something to Sinistra again, but Sinistra stood up and made to sweep out the side other all the way at the  _other_ end of the head table. She only paused to say something to Professor Lupin, who broke from conversation with McGonagall to look at her in surprise. But Sinistra was already gone, with Vector following her and Babbling standing up to hurry quickly after them both.

 A hubbub of noise broke out as Babbling disappeared, and it looked like McGonagall was about to stand up and investigate. The noise only got louder as McGonagall crossed the hall to follow Snape.

 “What was  _that_ about, do you think?” Harry said.

 “I don’t know,” Hermione said, in the voice of someone who wanted desperately to find out.

 Ron picked up his goblet and squinted at it. “Maybe there’s something in the pumpkin juice tonight,” he said. “But now I’m thinking that we should  _definitely_ ask Sinistra for the books. I mean, at least it’d probably piss Snape off, right?”

 Harry winced. “If we do, let’s not tell him. He hates me enough.” Then Harry groaned as a horrible realization hit him. “And we have Potions class tomorrow morning.  _Great._ ”

 “Oh, shit,” Ron said, and winced as well. “I forgot about that.” 

 Harry put his head in his hands and wondered if the Grim did requests.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Harry is an amazing hypocrite all the time and I love him. Or just… he has zero trust in authority, so it’s like… well… learning how to steal better would be more convenient and, yeah, I might run into Sirius Black or whatever, but whatever. Last year there was a basilisk, so comparably this is safer than last year. After all, they just increased security, right?
> 
> \- I was going to have the person/people interrupting Harry and the Grim be random and nameless, but, filtering through Gryffindors and Ravenclaws in my head, I remembered Cho Chang. (The friend was Marietta Edgecombe, yes.) Poor, poor Harry and his feelings. 
> 
> \- I… think I got distracted by the wonders of magical learning and Harry, Ron, and Hermione as a Mystery Trio. Because, like, the details of magical education are fascinating? (And book censorship is a thing to be concerned about.) Also, I really like the idea of the trio just… accidentally falling into Looking for a Mystery to Solve, and then huddling around Gryffindor table discussing how to solve it, legally or illegally. Everybody around them at Gryffindor table is becoming increasingly used to this. Neville knows so much shit about the trio, he could bury them beside his slug-eating begonias. 
> 
> \- I wanted more Sirius in this chapter, but I think the bulk of Harry’s Grim interaction is going to be happening next chapter, before his next lesson with Lupin. (I can’t remember if I revealed this already, but I don’t think Sirius was doing well throughout most if not all of POA. Firstly, I hold the headcanon that spending too much time in your Animagus form is bad for you (think about the relationship between function and form, and this is what Sirius was doing because being Padfoot = safe). Secondly, Azkaban was bad.) 
> 
> \- People liked Sinistra and I think… I might have more Sinistra. She’ll probably tie mostly into the Warrington werewolf and werewolf rights plot, and I like the idea of a closer female mentor for the trio.
> 
> \- Happy New Year!


	8. The Running of the Weasels

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is more of an interlude than much else, though it still has importance to the story. I cut this bit off the next chapter, because the next chapter (which is coming very soon), is very long. Think of it all as one very long chapter.

 It wasn’t easy to sneak off to the kitchens after supper like he’d promised. Harry had to accompany Ron and Hermione all the way back to Gryffindor Tower. He’d spent all of dessert trying to come up with an excuse that wouldn’t seem suspicious, but he hadn’t managed, and he didn’t want to go sneaking about without his father’s Invisibility Cloak to keep from getting caught on the way there or back.

 It had been made  _very_ clear that Harry –  _especially_ Harry, because Sirius Black was apparently after him – wasn’t supposed to go wandering around on his own, so Harry wanted to make especially sure he wouldn’t be caught at it. He didn’t think McGonagall or Percy, who were thankfully no longer tailing him at every moment after the last scare, would be nearly so lenient and friendly about it as Cedric had been, especially not after the arguments at dinner. Harry actually shuddered at the mere thought of being caught by  _Snape_ tonight, which had gotten him odd looks from his friends.

 “Just thought about Potions tomorrow again,” Harry explained. It was close enough to the truth.

 Ron moaned. “Oh,  _mate,_ don’t remind me or I’m gonna be sick.”

 “Neville, are you alright there, mate?” Dean said.

 The Gryffindor third-years were walking back to the Tower in small pack. Neville had overheard their dinner conversation about Potions and now somehow looked even worse at the repetition of it. He looked worse about it than Harry felt, and Harry almost hoped sympathetically that something awful would happen to Neville just so the poor bloke didn’t have to go to class tomorrow.

 “D’you want me to break your leg for you or something?” Seamus offered.

 “I think I know a good jinx,” Lavender said gently.

 Neville shook his head and lifted his chin firmly. “No, I’ll… I’ll live.”

 “Your call, mate,” Seamus said with a shrug.

 “Ah, the sweet fumbling of youth learning their way around skiving.”  

 Harry turned around to see the Weasley twins appear just behind their group. Like predators having spotted vulnerable prey.

 Fred bustled his way forward, which was easy because he was so much taller and broader than all the third-years, and threw a long arm around Neville’s neck. He continued, grinning like a shark: “You kids have got the right idea, there, but all the wrong ideas for it. Faking illness or injury  _is_ a good way to get out of class, but it’s a tricky balance.”

 “Y’see, breaking a leg is guaranteed to get you out of class, but it’ll only get you stuck in the Hospital Wing,” George explained, as he too bustled forward to throw an arm over Fred’s arm over Neville’s shoulders.

 He ignored Neville's very alarmed look, too busy checking back over his shoulder.

 “Whereas a jinx isn’t permanent enough,” Fred said, and winked at Lavender, who flushed. He slapped Neville on the chest then waggled his finger warningly. “One good dispelling and you’re done for!”

 “Your best bet is some sorts of potions mishap, ironically enough, mate.”

 “Some dramatic, visible emergency that looks like an ordinary illness, but with an instant antidote that’s  _not_ at the tip of a teacher’s wand.”

 “You haven’t known fear until you’ve seen McGonagall when she thinks you’ve taken some bad potion on purpose,” George whispered. “Has to seem natural. No obviously magical effects. Take it from us, mate, that’s not an interrogation you want to go through twice.”

 Fred clapped Neville on the chest again and Neville just looked even more terrified. “The art of a skiving con is more complex than you realize, young one. But don’t you worry, we’ve-”

 “Fred, Percy’s at six o’clock,” George interrupted urgently.

 “- got to run,” Fred finished smoothly. “Ta.”

 They slipped their arms out from over Neville’s shoulders, hunched down so they blended in better among the third-years, and scuttled lankily away just as Percy’s voice rose up calling for them. Not five seconds later, Percy was politely excusing himself through the crowds with a face like a storm cloud.

 “Excuse me. Excuse me. Head Boy  _coming through,_ ” Percy was saying. Then, upon reaching them, realized distractedly, “Oh, hello there, Ron. I don’t suppose you’ve seen the twins anywhere-?”

 Ron shook his head, and all the other third-years around them set their spines a little straighter.

 “Of course not,” Percy muttered.  

 “What’d they do now?”

 “Oh, nothing you need worry about. I just need to have a word with them about something – something completely trivial, really, not at all urgent,” Percy furiously assured the crowd of third-years now hanging on to his every scowling word, as they walked down the halls. “I’m quite busy, however, so I’d prefer to get it out of the way as soon as possible, so… Nothing you need worry about, Ron, I just need a word. It’s not important, but I am  _very_ busy, so-”

 “Right,” Ron said disbelievingly. Then casually asked, “What happened with Penelope?”

 Percy stiffened, from where he was craning his neck trying to spot the twins. There were freezing charms with more warmth than his voice as he said, “The disagreement between Head Girl Clearwater and myself is none of your business, Ron. Please excuse me.”

 With that, Percy hurried off towards the next group ahead of them. This group happened to be a couple of second-years, including Colin Creevey and Ginny Weasley.

 “Ginny! How are you? I don’t suppose you’ve seen-?”

 “They went that way,” Ginny said easily, and pointed in the complete opposite direction that Harry had seen the twins go. “Towards the Charms Club room.”

 “Much obliged, Gin,” Percy said, and nearly broke out into a run to follow her directions. 

 “Fuck,” Ron said, as they all watched him go. “I should’ve done that.”

 “I heard from Padma – who heard from Su Li, who heard from Melissa Edgecombe, who heard from Alvina Dunne, who heard from Livie Lemaire – that Penelope Clearwater was thinking about breaking up with him,” Parvati confided in them all. “And Padma also heard from Anthony Goldstein, who heard from Rory Bagman, that they  _did._ ”

 “Ouch,” Seamus said with a wince, while Harry was still trying to parse that.

 “But why’s Percy pissed at the twins?” Ron wondered. “You don’t think they had something to do with it, do you? They can’t have. Mum was  _so happy_ to learn that Percy finally had a girlfriend – a  _serious_ girlfriend, as opposed to Bill’s ‘just having a bit of a lot of fun’ flings and Charlie’s having absolutely none. Mum and Dad dated at Hogwarts, y’know? But now Bill’s fucked off to the Middle East and Africa and Charlie’s married to his dragons. Fuck, if the twins broke ‘em up, Percy just has to tell Mum – and he will – and they’re  _so_  bloody dead.”

 “It would be mean even for them,” Hermione agreed, then sighed. “Sometimes I worry about them.”

 “I don’t,” Ron said. “Then I’d be Bill, except they don’t listen to me, so I’d go nuts.”

 Harry thought about it. “So you’d be Percy, then.”

 Ron blinked, then laughed so hard he nearly fell down the stairs by tripping on a trick one. “Shit, mate,” he said, as Harry and Dean helped haul him back up. “You’re right! Oh, damn. Poor git.” 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Weasley family antics are very fun. 
> 
> \- I headcanon Ginny and Colin Creevey to be friends. They're in the same year and House, after all. (They also both have enormous and embarrassing crushes on Harry Potter to come to terms with.) I wrote a bit of Ginny and Colin's friendship in my fic [_"repeated a thousand times in golden ink"_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9484514), which was a fluffy, friendship-centric one-shot set in HBP and also involving Luna Lovegood. 
> 
> \- I think the Weasley twins would've been thinking about Skiving Snackboxes for a looong time. They have Plans. 
> 
> \- Poor Percy, I know. He makes it so easy, though. If you enjoy Percy and his character and Weasley family thoughts, I wrote a funny Canon-Divergence one-shot in which Percy changes everything in his fourth-year by being overworked and distracted. It's called [_"Percy Weasley and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day"_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6454921).
> 
> \- Gryffindor solidarity is probably volunteering to injure someone to get them out of class.


	9. The Dog and His Boy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a DOUBLE UPDATE. Did you get the last chapter? It was brief, but it had Weasley twins in it.

 Harry begged off hanging around the common room in favour of going to bed early, claiming a long day behind him and a longer day ahead of him. Ron had somehow managed to talk Hermione into a game of chess, a difficult feat when Hermione’s books were such a draw and how Hermione didn’t at all enjoy losing, and they bid him an easy goodnight. Harry felt a little guilty, playing on how they’d both expressed a desire to see him sleep more, but he didn’t yet want to deal with Ron’s freak-out over the Grim.

 They might not let him go and Harry had  _promised_  the Grim they would meet up after dinner. So… not yet.

 Dismissed by his friends, Harry then ran up to his dorm, grabbed the Invisibility Cloak, climbed into bed and drew the curtains, pulled on the cloak, and slipped back out of bed. He was so distracted thinking about how he might be able to make it back before bedtime if he was quick – maybe even back before Ron and Hermione finished their chess game – that he got out of the wrong side of the bed.

 He'd been so focused on avoiding Ron, who wasn’t even in the dorm, that he’d gotten out of bed on the side where  _Neville’s_ bed was instead, and Neville  _was_ in the dorm. In fact, sitting on his bed with a Herbology text, Neville was staring wide-eyed at the break in Harry’s curtains, which without doubt clearly revealed Harry wasn’t in bed like his bidding goodnight had suggested.

 Oh, no. Harry looked across the room to where Dean was lying in bed, drawing something in one of his sketchbooks. Dean was too engrossed in his drawing to have noticed Neville’s sharp intake of breath. Seamus had gone to the bathroom just as Harry had come in, but he could be back any minute.

 Harry ripped off the hood of the Invisibility Cloak and lifted a hand out as well, then put a finger to his lips in a desperate  _shush._ Then together in a  _please._

 He wouldn’t be gone long, so if Neville just  _didn't say anything..._

 But Neville, still wide-eyed, looked conflicted, like he thought Harry was about to get up to no good.

 So, Harry raised a finger and mouthed  _one hour,_ then tapped his wrist. He did it twice, hoping it would get through. He couldn’t tell, because Neville only looked more conflicted then before. Thankfully Dean still hadn’t looked up from his drawing, so Harry put his hands, which like his head probably looked like they were floating in the air, together again once last time, then he pulled up his hood, retracted his hands, and scurried silently out of the dorm.

 Harry didn’t run into Seamus on the stairs or anything, but slipping through the Gryffindor Common Room unseen  _just_ after dinner wasn’t an easy task. Plenty of people had gone up to their own dorms, but plenty of other people lingered, hanging about to do homework or just laughing it up about something. Difficult task or not, however, it wasn’t one Harry hadn’t managed before. Harry nimbly dodged a pair of older students and skirted around Ron and Hermione setting up their game, and sneaked out the portrait hole by shadowing one of the female Gryffindor prefects.

 All without anyone the wiser, Harry hit the hallway outside Gryffindor Tower with a silent sigh of relief.

 Well, everyone none the wiser except Neville. Hopefully Neville wouldn’t go straight to McGonagall about this one; Harry really did mean to be back soon and he was only going to the kitchens, with all those house elves and the Hufflepuff dormitories close nearby. Neville had been worried about Sirius Black for months now, but Black hadn’t been seen in the castle since he’d attacked the Fat Lady and the teachers had strengthened security.

 Harry’s foremost concern was how loud Sir Cadogan – who had thankfully been prevented from wildly changing the password by an irate McGonagall after being confronted by a half-dozen sobbing first years, all convinced they were locked out of the tower forever – would be about letting him back in.

 

~

 

 Compared to leaving Gryffindor Tower, making his way down to the kitchens was a breeze. Harry didn’t see anyone besides a couple teachers in passing, who had apparently taken a break from their rounds to gossip. It wasn’t even a close call. The whisper of their voices carried down the hall.

  _“-never seen her so furious about anything! Except perhaps last year when…”_ Professor Vector, the Arithmancy teacher, was telling Professor Flitwick.

Flitwick nodded and Harry could make out only a part of his squeaky agreement.  _“Terrible business, that! Just terrible! I met the poor woman, you know! One of my ex-students had to step in to help; I heard from Ms. Lerner recently that the Minister’s Senior Undersecretary is-”_

 Harry wanted to stay and hear more, but he’d already stepped onto a staircase, and it had jolted him out of the conversation and carried him away before he heard any more than that. Going back to eavesdrop meant looping around and going up a floor, by which time the teachers could have changed a dozen topics, so Harry unhappily put it to a loss and hurried onwards.

 He didn’t even know what an undersecretary was. He’d have to ask Hermione later.

 

~

 

 The way to the kitchens was just as warm and smelled just as good as Harry remembered. It felt a bit like waking up in the burrow, just a bit, in that part of Harry hadn’t dared hope it had all been true. He went over to the painting of the fruit bowl and looked around. He didn’t see the Grim anywhere, not even in the few flickering shadows. Since the Hufflepuff dormitories were close but not directly connected, Harry decided to take off his cloak, so maybe the Grim could see him.

 “Hello?” Harry called out in a hushed whisper. He’d tried to get here quickly. “Sorry I’m late.”

 At first, nothing happened. None of the shadows rolled over or barked, revealing themselves to be a great black dog. Harry felt very foolish, standing alone in this corridor. Maybe it wasn’t that the Grim had already been and gone, but that the Grim hadn’t and would never come because, no matter how clever it seemed, it was still just a dog. Harry had tried to arrange a meeting with a dog and, now potentially being stood up, felt extremely silly for having expected the Grim to show up.

 But then there was a light clicking sound at the other end of the corridor and a dark, furry head poked around a doorway. Then the Grim was pelting down the hallway towards Harry, which might have been incredibly terrifying if not for its tongue lolling out and its tail wagging and its happy barks. Harry only had the time to smile widely and then desperately try to shush it, before a massive dog collided with his legs. Harry had tried to prepare for impact, but he toppled over with a loud yelp instead.

 The next thing Harry knew, his face was getting attacked by a dog’s tongue. “Hey!” It might have been nice, but mostly it was overwhelming and gross. The Grim’s breath smelled  _terrible._ “Hey! Cut it out!” Harry pushed back, laughing. “You still need a bath! A  _good_ bath! No,  _seriously,_ cut it out!”

 The Grim did cut it out. It whined loudly as it let Harry push it off, its tail batting against the floor as it sat down beside him. Once Harry was done wiping at his face with his sleeves, he grinned widely at it and reached out to pet the Grim properly, ruffling its dusty fur and scratching behind its ears. The Grim grinned back at him, in its doggy way, and barked again, but quietly. 

 “Shush! Please, stop barking. People’ll hear you! Yeah, I know, I’m happy to see you too,” Harry assured it, laughing. He kept scratching behind its ears as he got up. “Oh, wait a moment…” Harry had left the Invisibility Cloak on the ground and bent back down now to pick it up.

 Under his hand, the Grim’s ears perked up. Before Harry knew what was happening, the Grim had darted forward into the Invisibility Cloak, ripping it out of his hand.

 “Hey!” Harry cried.

 But the Grim didn’t go very far. It  _couldn’t_ go very far, with the Invisibility Cloak draped over its face like it was pretending to be a ghost. Harry stopped reaching after it and watched as the Grim ran in circles for several seconds, tripped over part of the shimmering cloak, and then rolled across the stone floor a few times. When it finally stopped flopping over, it was lying on its belly with the cloak was wrapped around its upper half, which was now invisible. Its wiggling bottom half and delightedly wagging tail were the only parts of the Grim still visible.

 Harry stepped forward, knelt, and groped where he thought the Grim’s head might be. Once his hand closed on smooth, cool fabric, he pulled it carefully away. Parts of the cloak shimmered in and out of visibility, as Harry looked under his cloak and saw the Grim with its chin on its paws. It grinned at him again, panting, and Harry smiled back even though its breath still stank.

 “Hey. You can’t have this. Sorry.”

 The Grim’s ears went down and suddenly its striking grey eyes looked a lot bigger and sadder.

 “It’s a  _people_ cloak. It won’t even  _fit_ you,” Harry objected, and he tugged on the cloak again when the Grim’s ears came back up. Harry had  _known_ it was being dramatic, even if that sad look had made his chest twist. “It’s not yours. It’s mine. It belonged to my dad.” The cloak was slowly coming free, rippling back into visibility. “Come  _on._ Give it. It’s the only thing of his I have. Please?”

 With a great sigh, the Grim wriggled backwards and let Harry pull the cloak free.

 “Thanks,” Harry said wryly, then looked at the cloak in his hands. “Oh, you shed on  _everything_ you touch, don’t you?” There was black dog fur all over his dad’s cloak now. “I guess it’ll still work. I won’t be complaining about dog fur on the cloak if Snape comes around the bend.”

 The Grim growled, then, when Harry looked at it, startled, sat down and grinned at him. Cautiously, Harry reached down to pet the Grim again and smiled when it nuzzled into his hand.

 “Where’d that come from? Oh, I guess I promised you food, huh?”

 The Grim’s tail flopped in agreement.

 “Right, let’s go see the house elves then. Sorry again, about keeping you waiting like this.”

 Harry turned around and tickled the pear of the fruit bowl painting, and led the way into the kitchen with the Grim nudging at his legs. The smell and warmth of the kitchens hit him as soon as he opened the door, and it was as enormous as he remembered, from the counterpart House tables to the twisting network of pipes on the ceiling to the massive brick ovens at the far end. However, it was less busy than that early morning, right before breakfast, and less brightly lit as well.

 The counterpart House tables were covered in dirty dishes and uneaten food, so the steaming pots and hissing pans of breakfast had been replaced by great soapy tubs. About a dozen house elves were waving their hands like tiny conductors in tea towels, directing the dirty crockery and cutlery in dancing lines to clean and dry and polish themselves. Once clean, the glistening plates, platters, glasses, and bowls and every piece of dinnerware that had graced the Hogwarts tables at dinner… rose up and stacked themselves neatly on the shelves in shining towers around the stone walls.

 It was another marvellous display of magic and Harry wished, not for the first time, that they’d learn  _this_ instead of, say, Divination. Now  _this_ was useful magic. He’d never have to scrub a floor or dust a windowsill again. Like Mrs. Weasley and her Burrow which, when Harry had been privileged enough to stay there last summer, had seemed to run like an army under a formidable general.

 The rest of the house elves – not all of them, Harry thought, but most of the rest of them – were sitting at the other side of the kitchen, at the long tables. A few of them were scraping food off plates or sorting some of the uneaten food into large piles, and the rest of them were helping themselves to the leftovers or to food that Harry hadn’t seen at dinner. Stews and bread, it looked like. They were laughing and chatting, at the tables that were too big for them, having their own feast.

 Harry immediately felt like he was intruding on their supper. It had seemed a little too good to be true that people could sneak into the Hogwarts kitchen at any hour of the day and find house elves more than happy to give them as much food as anyone could ever want. Harry wasn’t sure how to interrupt and the Grim – the massive, shadowy dog that resembled a frightening death omen – was very casually hiding behind his legs.

 After what had happened last time, Harry didn’t blame it.

 Thankfully, Harry didn’t have to say anything to get someone’s attention. One of the house elves nearer to the kitchen entrance spotted Harry and the Grim standing by the door, then immediately grabbed another elf’s ear and whispered into it, and this elf grabbed the one beside them. The whisper chain went down the long table at impressive speed, leaving a number of elves staring at Harry and the Grim uncertainly, and at the end of this whisper chain, a familiar house elf popped up to stand on the table.

 “HARRY POTTER, SIR,” she shrieked.

 It seemed to Harry that he blinked and, with a loud  _POP,_ Penny was suddenly in front of him. She was the small house elf who’d actually spoken to him last time; he recognized her especially large, floppy ears and her bright brown eyes. He also recognized the way she took a quick hop back, upon realizing how close she was to the “Bad Dog” behind Harry’s legs.

 Harry smiled at her and rested a hand on the Grim’s neck. “Hi, Penny. Sorry to interrupt your meal.”

 Penny gasped when Harry said her name, which made Harry worry he’d somehow gotten her name wrong after all. “Oh, no, Harry Potter, sir! It is always a pleasure to be having you here in our kitchen,” she reassured him in her squeaky voice. “What can we be doing for you?”

 “I was… wondering if I could get some food again for… um…” Harry didn’t want to call the Grim  _“the Bad Dog”,_ but he didn’t really want to call it  _“the Grim”_  either. “For my friend here,” he finished awkwardly. “If that’s… okay?”

 Penny’s ears seemed to wriggle anxiously, but she nodded. “Of course, sir! Harry Potter is still very nice to keep feeding the Bad Dog! We will be having some food brought for a friend of Harry Potter right away!” Behind her, several staring house elves scurried into action, but Penny kept staring up at Harry and asked, “Is there anything we can get  _you,_ sir? Now that you are here?”

 “Oh, I’m not really hungry…” Harry began, before he saw Penny’s ears droop alarmingly. “Because dinner tonight was just  _so_ good! It was fantastic as always and I ate a lot. Thanks for the meal!” Harry wracked his mind for what he’d done with Mrs. Weasley. “I could… go for some tea, though?”

 Penny’s ears went right back up. Before Harry knew it, the same small table had been set up again in the corner of the massive room, and the house elves had trotted out a well-laden tea tray and a platter for the Grim, all while giving the massive dog a wide berth. Harry made sure again to thank the elves profusely for the trouble and to apologize for interrupting their own meal, which they accepted with more low bows and squeaky welcomes and flushing to the tips of their ears.

 The rest of the elves trotted off back to their own business, but Penny lingered. Harry assured her that she didn’t have to, but she insisted it was important to see to all his needs, and Harry took the opportunity to ask her a few questions that had been bothering him.

 It turned out that the Grim, happily chewing into its platter more slowly this time, hadn’t gotten into trouble with the house elves again. It had rather shown up in the kitchens twice since Sunday, both times late at night, and had sat hopefully in the corner until the house elves had offered it some food and water. After eating, it had left politely. Penny assured Harry that all of the house elves were very glad to see that the Bad Dog was not such a bad dog after all and would not be eating them.

 It also turned out that the house elves  _were_ responsible for the feeding of students’ pets and familiars, and were not supposed to feed the strays around Hogwarts and Hogsmeade. Penny admitted, however, in an ashamed whisper, that many of the house elves had a fondness for cats and their kittens, and had adopted many of the animals for their own. The few strays around Hogwarts weren’t always strays after all – some of them were, but most of them actually lived with the  _house elves,_ who tried their best to keep all these castle cats from bothering anyone, out of Professor Sprout’s greenhouses and the Hogwarts’ farms, and from hunting the local birds.

 Professor McGonagall’s brother apparently came to the castle once a month or so to make sure that the cats and other familiars were healthy and wouldn’t overpopulate the school. Harry, who hadn’t even known that Professor McGonagall  _had_ a brother, or that Hogwarts had  _farms,_  was a little stupefied.

 In hindsight, however, he wasn’t surprised to hear that Professor McGonagall had a fondness for cats, their kittens, and anyone who liked them.

 “That’s really nice of her,” Harry said to Penny, “and her brother.”

 Penny nodded fervently. “Yes! It is very, very nice of Misses McGonagall and Mister McGonagall!” She leaned in to confess, “We were very worried, when Misses McGonagall found out about the pets, but she was very nice and told Headmaster Dumbledore and they helped lots! Not all of us like pets or are having pets, but it is very nice to be allowed to be having them if we wants them.”

 Harry smiled at her and couldn’t remember the last time his chest had felt so unbearably warm. The way Penny was talking made him want to do nothing more than go find Hedwig and hug her as much as she’d let him.

 “Do you have any pets, Penny?”

 “Yes, sir! I am lucky enough to be having a cat named Flour!”

 “Oh, Flower,” Harry said. “That’s really pretty.”

 So, while the house elves weren’t  _supposed_ to be feeding the Grim, they thought that they could feed the Bad Dog if he was a friend or pet of Mister Harry Potter. Nothing they had tried had managed to keep the Grim out of the castle for long, apparently. The Grim kept coming back no matter how many times they had tried to chase him out when they found him, and they had trouble finding him sometimes. 

 The Grim’s tail wagged happily at this news - or perhaps at being so tricky, or both - and Harry was glad for it. Hopefully, if the Grim could get regular meals, it would eventually become less frighteningly thin. It was a relief to hear that the massive dog wasn’t getting into trouble with the elves and wouldn’t be going hungry.

 “Thanks, Penny, that’s really nice of you,” Harry said.

 Penny squeaked in surprised, then sniffled quietly. “Harry Potter is very welcome,” she said, and Harry thought she was going to scurry off, her ears and face were so red and her eyes watering a little at the edges, but she bravely recollected herself and stayed. “Harry Potter is a very, very nice wizard to care about the Bad Dog and ask questions about the lives of house elves,” she said firmly.

 “Um, thanks,” Harry said awkwardly. He didn’t feel like he’d done that much. “I just… Thanks for looking after Hogwarts.” The house elves had no reason to keep giving him food or feed the Grim, but they were doing it anyway, and Harry hadn’t even known they were here before.

 The Grim snorted at him again and Harry shot it a warning look. This  _still_ wasn’t funny.

 A thought occurred to Harry then, thinking about being nice to house elves, and he remembered the other questions that had been bothering him. He didn’t think that Professor McGonagall or Headmaster Dumbledore would be mean to the Hogwarts house elves, who all seemed very happy to be here, but there were still teachers like Snape here. Snape seemed to live to be mean. Who knew how the people who knew about the house elves treated them when other people weren’t looking?

 “Are… are all the people at Hogwarts nice to you, Penny?” Harry asked awkwardly.

 Penny nodded, making her ears flop. “Most of the people at Hogwarts are very nice!” Then her ears went down as she continued, “The students are not being allowed to call house elves personally! Mister Flitwick and Misses Sprout say that we are allowed to lock the kitchen door, if students ask for too much or are being bad, and we are being supposed to tell them if it happens.”

 “Oh,” Harry said, at once relieved and unnerved. “That’s really good. I haven’t done anything wrong, have I?”

 “Oh, no!” Penny squeaked, horrified at the implication. “Oh, no! Harry Potter, sir, has done nothing wrong! Harry Potter is a very nice wizard! We would never be locking the door or telling the teachers on Harry Potter, sir! Never!”

 The relief through Harry was heady. “Thanks, Penny.”

 It paused, however, as Harry realized she’d only answered his question about the students. “Hey, uh… are all the  _professors_ at Hogwarts nice to you? They don’t…” Harry’s voice lowered to a whisper, as he remembered several awful scenes from last year. “They don’t hit you or anything, right? They don’t… they don’t make you hurt yourselves as punishment?”

 Penny looked even more horrified. “Oh,  _no!_ They would  _never_ be doing that, sir!”

 Harry’s shoulders sagged and the relief continued.  _Oh, good._

 “Headmaster Dumbledore and Missus Sprout is saying that we tell them right away if anything like that happens here!” Penny assured him, squeaking much louder than Harry would have liked. House elves all around the kitchen were standing to look at them. “They are very nice wizards here at Hogwarts!” She seemed to be getting genuinely upset. “It is very good to be living here and we are all very happy! They would never be doing that!”

 “I didn’t think they  _would,_ ” Harry assured her quickly. “I just wanted to make sure everyone was nice here. I met someone who was  _very mean_ to house elves last year and his son is here and I wanted to make sure that no one could hurt you like that. I’m sorry.”

 He looked around the kitchens. The house elves had slowly been clearing out, as they finished cleaning up after dinner or finished their own meal, but there were still a few dozen of them in the room. Many of them were now staring at Harry and Penny, looking very worried and scared. Harry didn’t want to make them look like that and looked back to Penny, who was taking in deep breaths and sniffling.

 “Sorry, Penny. I’m not… I’m not insulting anyone, alright?”

 Penny shook her head and her ears flopped, and she stopped rubbing her eyes long enough to look at him again. “Is alright, Harry Potter, sir,” she hiccupped. “Harry Potter is a very nice wizard, to be worried about house elves. But he is wrong, sir. Life at Hogwarts is very good to us, sir.”

 “That’s nice. That’s really nice to hear, Penny.”

 Penny sniffled again and nodded, and Harry hovered anxiously while she calmed down. Suddenly, he remembered he had a handkerchief in his pocket, having been carrying it around all day for an opportunity to give it back to its owner. He quickly pulled it out to offer it to her.

 “Oh, no, Harry Potter, sir!” Penny refused, and summoned a napkin from one of the kitchen’s shelves with a snap of her fingers. “I will be alright!”

 She then proceeded to attack her own face with this napkin, as though fervently trying to demonstrate how much she didn’t need a handkerchief from him, and Harry could only sit back awkwardly, with his borrowed, rejected handkerchief in hand. Thankfully, the rest of the house elves seemed to be going back to their business, having seen that Penny was alright. Harry kind of got the impression that some of them were still watching him, even if it didn’t look like they were.

 Harry saw movement out of the corner of his eye and looked down again to see that the Grim, having finished most of its food, had gotten to its feet and was sniffing at the handkerchief on Harry knee. Like it had done with the Invisibility Cloak now draped over Harry’s chair, the Grim suddenly snatched up the handkerchief before Harry could stop it. Harry made another valiant grab for it, not having expected this for a second time, but the dog was already dancing out of his reach.  

 “Hey, not again!” Harry said and got to his feet.

 The Grim wasn’t rolling in the handkerchief, as the fabric was much too small to roll in, and had dropped the handkerchief on the stone floor to snuffle at it curiously. The great black dog only turned its massive body in Harry’s path, as Harry tried to move around it to scoop the handkerchief back up. It was a remarkably effective barricade; for all that it was skinny, the Grim could bump Harry around easily.

 “Why do you keep stealing my things? Please give that back,” Harry begged it, and darted around the Grim. This only made the Grim snatch the handkerchief up again and trot away. “Come on, that’s not even mine. Drop it. Please? I need to give it back to someone.”

 The Grim ignored him and wiggled under one of the long tables, popping around the other side. It turned around and gave Harry a very undeservedly smug look. Since the tables were clear of dishes now, Harry made the decision to hop over the table. The Grim, in turn, made the decision to wiggle under another of the tables and not come out again. Harry dropped to his knees and looked underneath the table in exasperation; the Grim was snuffling at the handkerchief again. It was giving Harry a very canine cold shoulder that was belied by its ears when Harry sighed.

 “Please give that back? What’s with you and handkerchief and cloaks? You don’t even have the hands to use a handkerchief; they’re called  _hand_ kerchief, not  _paw_ kerchiefs.”

 The cold shoulder turned farther away from him. It was like talking to Hedwig when she was in one of her moods.

 Harry reached under the table and carefully tried to take the handkerchief back. He managed to snag one corner, but the Grim had trapped it under its paw and gave up the cold shoulder so it could turn and give him another very sad look instead. Harry stubbornly thought that it was overdoing it on the drama again.

 “I’m sorry, but you  _can’t_ have that,” Harry said firmly. “I really do need to give it back. What am I supposed to say? I can’t tell Professor Lupin that a  _dog_ ate his handkerchief.”

 The Grim just tilted its head at him.

 “I  _can’t,”_ Harry repeated. “I need him to give me lessons on how to fight the dementors.”

 The Grim stared at him for a long moment, then sighed heavily and pushed the handkerchief towards Harry. Harry quickly snatched it back and stuffed it in his pocket.

 “Thank you.”

 Harry got back on his feet and looked around, feeling his face heat when he realized how many of the house elves were staring at him. Penny had even gotten up on one of the long tables and was trotting towards him, clutching at her napkin-turned-handkerchief.

 “Sorry about that,” Harry said to her, and rubbed the back of his neck.

 “It is alright, Harry Potter, sir,” Penny assured him. “I have done the same thing with my kitty!”

 “Oh. Well. Thanks.” Harry glanced back towards the entrance of the kitchens and noticed an enormous clock, hanging over the door.  _Oh, no._ “Is that the time? I have to get back to Gryffindor Tower!” He bent down and looked under the table again, at the Grim. “Come on! I have to get out of here and back to bed!”

 Neville might freak out and report him to McGonagall or something.

 With another sigh, the Grim wiggled out from under the table, and Harry looked back at Penny and the other house elves. “Thanks again for the food. It was really nice to talk to you, Penny.” Harry then noticed, as Penny squeaked, a familiar house elf among the crowd. “Oh, hi again, Toby.”

 Toby squeaked too, only while Penny just flushed, Toby turned the colour of a tomato and immediately crawled under a table. Toby went out of sight and stayed there again, though at least it hadn't been into a pot this time. Harry wasn’t really surprised, though he felt embarrassed that this kept happening. It made him want to crawl underneath tables too. Instead of doing that, however, Harry waved to the rest of the house elves and said goodbye, and got a small chorus of squeaky farewells in turn.

 “Harry Potter can come visit anytime!” Penny promised him, as she walked along the long table to see him to the table to pick up his cloak and to the door. “It is always very nice to see you here.”

 “Thanks,” Harry said, as he threw the cloak over his arm. “Oh, wait, Penny?”

 “Yes, sir?”

 “Do you know what happened to a house elf named Dobby?”

 “Dobby, sir?” Penny’s little face scrunched up in confusion and thought. “There are no house elves at Hogwarts with that name, Harry Potter, sir.”

 “No, I know. He didn’t work at Hogwarts. He worked for the Malfoys,” Harry explained quickly. “But he was freed last year, here at Hogwarts, in June. I was wondering if you knew what happened to him. I haven’t seen him in months. He’s… my friend and I wanted to make sure he’s alright.”

 Penny’s eyes went wide and kept getting wider as Harry talked. “Oh,” she said quietly. “I am sorry, sir, but I am not knowing what happened to him.”

 “…Alright. Thanks anyway-”

 “But I can be asking the other elves, Harry Potter, sir!” Penny said quickly. “One of them will be knowing what happened to your friend, or can be asking other elves in other houses, sir! We can be finding him for you!” She then sniffled again. “Harry Potter is a very nice wizard to be worrying.”

 “Um, alright, thanks,” Harry said quickly, not wanting to watch her get upset again. “If you could do that, it’d be really great. I’d appreciate it a lot. I have to leave now, but I’ll come back?”

 “We will be having news for you as soon as possible, sir!”

 

~

 

 With some more seemingly endless thanks and farewells, Harry finally managed to leave the house elves and the kitchens behind. He couldn’t believe how nice they were to him. He couldn’t believe he’d never known they were here. He was desperately glad that they were treated well here.

 The outside hallway was cool and clear, with its flickering torches dim as the castle prepared to sleep. Harry wondered if the house elves were responsible for that too, as he swung the Invisibility Cloak around his shoulders. They must be, he decided. He wondered just how much of the castle’s magic they were responsible for and if everyone else had known about the house elves at Hogwarts – maybe it was just one of those magical things everyone was expected to know already, while Harry didn’t.

 Beside him, the Grim yawned, showing off very long, sharp, and yellow teeth. It then looked up at Harry’s floating head and blinked tiredly, apparently undaunted by Harry being partially invisible.

 “I have to go back to Gryffindor Tower now, before someone notices I’m gone,” Harry said, and reached out of the cloak to pat the Grim on the head again. He ruffled its ears and smiled as its tail wagged obligingly. “Looks like you’re gonna be alright now. Getting fed. Not having to run away from house elves trying to chase you out of the castle.”

 The tail wagging quickened and the Grim made a huffing sound in agreement.

 Harry scratched its head one last time and pulled away. “I’ll see you around the castle, I guess? Good night. Don’t chase any cats or you might get in trouble with Penny again.”

 The Grim huffed in agreement again – or, at least, what Harry hoped was agreement. It was good enough for Harry, whose getting in trouble now depended on Neville’s nerves, which were kind of wobbly. Harry pulled up the Invisibility Cloak’s hood and tugged the cloak itself closer around him, then set off back to bed and hoped that Ron hadn’t pulled back his curtains or anything to check on him.

 After a few paces, a  _click-clicking_ sound alerted Harry that he was being followed. He turned around and saw the Grim walking closely behind him. It bumped gently into his legs, then shook its head and looked up at him. Its stare was a bit off, but it had the right general area. 

 “What are you doing?” Harry demanded. “I can’t bring you into Gryffindor Tower with me.”

 The Grim just sat down and looked very hopeful.

 “No, I  _can’t,_ ” Harry insisted. “People haven’t gone to bed yet and they’d  _notice_ you. Where would you even sleep? Under my bed? All my roommates think I’m going to get killed by the Grim… or Sirius Black… or something. If they saw your  _tail,_ they’d  _scream._  Shoo.”

 The Grim just wagged its tail at him, as though it wasn't a massive, scary-looking dog that resembled an omen of death. 

 Nothing that Harry said changed its mind. Harry walked invisibly along the Hogwarts corridors with the Grim following him closely. He tried everything to dissuade it, from the risk of getting caught by Percy to the risk of getting caught by McGonagall. From the fact that sleeping underneath Harry’s bed couldn’t possibly be that comfortable to the fact that Harry would  _force_ the Grim to have a bath if it was going to be staying with him, nothing worked. The Grim just trotted after him, tongue lolling out innocently, following him up the moving staircases like it was the happiest dog in the world.

 Harry got all the way up to the seventh floor and had almost given up on changing the Grim’s mind or getting it to go away. He was desperately trying to figure out how he could sneak the  _Grim_ into his dormitory, when he was saved by cheery whistling and footsteps coming down the corridor. The Grim finally froze and took a few steps back, at the sound of Professor Flitwick approaching.

 It looked towards the space where Harry was, underneath the cloak. It had a very urgent look in its eyes.

 “I’m  _not_ sneaking you into Gryffindor Tower,” Harry repeated in a hushed whisper. “I’m  _not._ I told you: my roommates would go mad. I’ll see you some other time, alright? After Quidditch practice or after dinner or something.”

 The threat of Flitwick approaching was what finally did the trick. The Grim took a few more nervous steps back, gave Harry one last beseeching and urgent look that made Harry’s heart twist, and then finally turned tail and ran off down the darkened corridor. Harry breathed a sigh of relief as it disappeared around the corner, then held his breath as he very carefully snuck past Professor Flitwick and then hurried to get back into Gryffindor Tower.

 He didn’t want to imagine what might have happened if he’d turned up with the  _Grim_ when Professor McGonagall was waiting for him! Imagining Professor McGonagall waiting for him was bad enough, especially when Harry  _especially_  wasn't supposed to go anywhere alone.

 Sir Cadogan accepted the password once Harry ripped off the Invisibility Cloak’s hood, and stopped making threatening declarations about his prowess fighting invisible enemies in favour of bragging about how  _he_ could sneak around a castle in full, gleaming armour if he ever decided to do so. Harry desperately tried to shush him - to no avail, Sir Cadogan’s adventures trampled all protests and audiences in its wake - and pulled the hood of the cloak back up. He crept back into the common room as the portrait quickly clicked shut again behind him, Sir Cadogan's anecdotes thankfully muffled on the other side.

 Peering into the common room from the entrance, he was relieved to find that not only were people still awake, but that Ron and Hermione were  _still_ playing their chess game. They were also arguing, very intensely, but it didn’t seem to be one of their rare genuinely bad arguments. It was just their ordinary bickering over any subject, and this time it seemed to be about chess strategies. Harry wondered if they'd been playing one game this entire time or if one of them had insisted on another round. 

 Thankfully, possibly because of Ron and Hermione's argument of a conversation, no one was looking at the portrait hole. Everyone in the common room, mostly a few upperclassmen, were focused on sticking their heads together for homework or chatting with loud laughter among themselves. Harry took this opportunity to sneak invisibly through the common room and up to bed, thankfully without the Grim on his heels. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Neville's reaction is coming up next chapter. Next chapter is probably going to contain a lot of Ron and Hermione, with a side of Remus and a small showing by Sinistra. Also, some Snape and the Ravenclaw/Gryffindor third-years. 
> 
> \- The Senior Undersecretary's identity and relation to certain plot threads, I'm sure people can guess. 
> 
> \- Padfoot wants that cloak, but it IS Harry's. Padfoot also wants to get into Gryffindor Tower, but Harry's not cooperating. Padfoot accidentally forming a real relationship with Harry complicates his plans, especially since he's still not in a great headspace and involving Harry might not be a good idea. What to do. What to do. It's hard being a dogfather. It's easier being Padfoot with Harry than it is being Sirius Black alone. Dogs don't have the same worries. 
> 
> \- If the house elves didn't want stray cats in the castle, there wouldn't be stray cats in the castle. I see nothing wrong with house elves adopting kittens. It's adorable. McGonagall approves. #Let House Elves Have Cats. I may go back and change a few details mentioning earlier that Hogwarts / Hogsmeade have farms nearby? Because, like, they have to have them. There are hundreds of house elves, who have incredible magical abilities, and how else do you support so many people? Also, where do the house elves live? They must sleep somewhere. 
> 
> \- FYI EDIT: To clear up any confusion, Dobby canonically wasn't hired at Hogwarts until Harry's 4th year, when Harry canonically found out about the Hogwarts house elves. Dobby spent Harry's 3rd year looking for paid work and was unsuccessful because no one wanted to pay a house elf. When Winky was freed by Crouch after the Quidditch World Cup in GOF, Dobby met up with her and decided that Hogwarts might have enough work for two freed house elves. Dobby is still looking for work right now. 
> 
> \- McGonagall canonically has two younger brothers, but I can't remember what canon says they do. The brother mentioned here is Malcolm, the middle McGonagall child, whose non-canonical interpretation of mine has appeared in my fics [_"The Cat Came Back"_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10870578) and [_"Take it to the Man in the Moon"_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13126917), in which Minerva steals baby Harry off the Dursleys' doorstep and takes him to her family. I have now decided he's whatever the magical world's equivalent of a vet is, and probably also has the Muggle certification for good measure. 
> 
> \- House Elves not having rights is still Not Okay. However, Harry's perspective on everything is skewed. Having grown up with the Dursleys and not being able to leave though they treat him terribly, and having seen how Lucius Malfoy treated Dobby, knowing that the house elves at Hogwarts are treated relatively well is currently good enough for him. Sure, Harry nearly dies at Hogwarts on the regular, but he's of the opinion that it's still Better Than It Could Be. He can't be trusted to know his own rights at the moment, much less to want to rock the boat that seems decent enough to him. 
> 
> \- **I wrote a prequel of sorts for this fic!** It's an introspective piece on Cedric Diggory's character, exploring Cedric as a funny guy with anxiety who wants to be a good person. It's called [_"Concerning Rabbits"_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14176482). I hope it makes up for how Cedric's been missing for the past couple of chapters and probably won't appear in earnest again until the chapter after next. Summary: _The thing about Cedric Diggory was that, if he was comfortable telling that sort of joke, he’d say that really, truly, and honestly… he was really just several anxious rabbits in a robe. Always had been._


	10. The Not-So-Lonely Wolf

 Thursday morning, the air surrounding the Gryffindor third-years was like that of people walking to the gallows. Even the unusual sunniness of the November morning didn’t change the fact that today was the busiest day of the week for them, and that they’d be spending their morning miserably. It was History with the Slytherins, followed by Potions with the Hufflepuffs, and then Divination with the Hufflepuffs for those taking it, if they all managed to live through the lesson before it.

 “Thursdays are the _worst,_ ” Ron declared tiredly, as Lavender and Parvati talked excitedly about their predictions for Professor Trelawney’s lesson. Seamus and Dean, who’d been clever enough not to take Divination, unlike the rest of them, gave him very insincerely pitying looks.

 “Cheer up, mate, we’ll all be dead by second period!” Seamus said, then added, “Sorry, Neville.”

 Neville, face down on the breakfast table, just groaned.

 Ron looked at him pityingly, as they all were doing, and advised, “Break a leg, mate.”

 Apropos of nothing, so it seemed, Hermione and Dean burst out laughing. Harry and Ron, and the rest of the table, looked at them in confusion. Hermione tried to wave off their attention, but she took one look at Ron’s sincerely bewildered face and just kept giggling like she couldn’t help herself.

 “What did I say?” Ron asked Harry. “Was it a Muggle thing?”

 Harry shrugged. “I dunno.”

 “It’s a theatre superstition,” Dean explained as he got a hold of himself. “I don’t know if it’s just a Muggle thing, but the idea is that wishing an actor good luck will actually bring them bad luck – like there’s some curse hanging over theatres or something – so you tell them that you hope they break a leg instead. You just wished Neville good luck.”

 “Huh,” Ron said thoughtfully. “Well… I guess I mean that too, but I meant that Neville should actually break a leg.” He looked at Neville very seriously. “Break a leg, mate. Both ways.”

 Hermione, who had only just managed to stop laughing, burst into giggles again. Harry and Dean both snorted and Neville managed to smile at the joke and goodwill. Parvati and Lavender leaned over to ask what was so funny, so then Dean launched into an explanation of what had just happened and Muggle theatre superstitions. Apparently, one of his sisters fancied herself to be an actress one day and the entire family was very supportive, so Dean had picked up a few things.

 Harry supposed that it made sense he hadn’t heard about that before. The Dursleys tended to shy away from anything that involved creativity or the arts. Dudley would complain stridently when his television programs didn’t have enough explosions or people getting punched in the face.

 He finished eating and they all got up to go to class. Harry listened, all the way to History, as Hermione admitted that her parents enjoyed the theatre very much and began talking about the interesting equivalent “good luck” phrases that they’d told her about. Here, people often said “break a leg” and knocked on wood to ward off bad luck, but people did and said many different things around the world. In Italian opera and theatre, for example, they apparently sometimes said, _“In bocca al lupo.”_ To which the appropriate response, Hermione said, was, _“Crepi il lupo!”_

 Harry missed Hermione’s explanation of what these phrases meant, unfortunately, distracted by Neville holding the door for all of them as they filed into Professor Binn’s classroom.

 To Harry’s great relief this morning, Neville hadn’t confronted him about sneaking out of Gryffindor Tower last night. Neville had given him a few odd, sidelong looks in their dormitory and at breakfast, but hadn’t told anyone – not Ron, not Hermione, not Professor McGonagall – that Harry and his Invisibility Cloak had been up to no good.

 Harry had been trying to decide whether to talk to Neville about it all morning. Neville hadn’t told anyone about Harry sneaking out _yet,_ but he could tell someone at any time, and Harry didn’t like how not knowing was hanging over his head.

 Soon enough, Professor Binns floated through the chalkboard and began the lesson. History was as boring as it ever was, with an awful side of having to ignore Malfoy and his cronies. But, against all of Binns’ deathly dullness, History seemed to fly by like the class never had before. Malfoy seemed to toss papers at Harry’s heard every ten minutes, to try and get his attention, but Harry ignored him and just stared at these scrunched-up progressions of time glumly.

 Before they knew it, the bell rang to signal the end of class, and the Gryffindor third-years had to pack up and march off to the Potions class they’d been dreading ever since Snape’s argument with Professor Sinistra last night at supper.

 “Maybe he’ll call in sick,” Ron said hopefully.

 “Has Snape _ever_ been sick, though?” Dean said mournfully.

 Snape missing class had been a delightful surprise a few times over the past two years, but only a few. It usually only happened when obscure Potions conferences or something came around.

 “Has Snape ever _not_ been sick?” Seamus muttered. “He looks it.”

 Hermione looked like she disapproved of anyone maligning a teacher’s appearance, but even she had no fondness for Snape. She was also immediately distracted by how Lavender’s head snapped up in front of her and Lavender said suddenly:

 “Oh, _no._ What if Snape wants those werewolf essays?”

 “We had Potions on Tuesday and he didn’t say anything about it,” Ron pointed out. “Besides, he can’t do that, can he? Lupin said we didn’t have to write those essays. We don’t have to do them.”

 “Maybe Snape’ll make us do them anyway,” Harry said glumly.

 After that public argument with Sinistra, Harry didn’t trust Snape not to take any spiteful excuse to make them all miserable. It wouldn’t be the first time that Snape had taken a foul mood or public embarrassment out on them. The boggart lesson with Boggart-Snape ending up in Neville’s grandmother’s clothes had proved that well enough.

 Harry looked over at Neville, who already looked miserable, and pulled away from Ron and Hermione to walk next to Neville instead. “Need a quick word,” Harry explained to Ron as he went.

 Ron looked confused, but went back to paying attention to Hermione listing school rules and figure out if a teacher could request homework on a subject that wasn’t theirs. Ron was quick to point out that he was pretty sure the teachers could assign anything they wanted, if Lockhart was proof of anything. This was a point which made Hermione turn a little pink.

 “Hey, Neville,” Harry said, after Neville hadn’t looked up.

 Neville startled and they began to trail a bit behind the group. “Oh, hey, Harry.”

“So, um… last night…” Harry began awkwardly.

 At this, Neville’s already awkward expression went straight for something much like panic. Like maybe he thought Harry was going to threaten or somehow blackmail him into silence.

 “Uh, could you just… keep not telling anyone, please?” Harry said quietly.

 Neville’s face scrunched up, like he was torn. “I really don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be sneaking out like that, Harry,” he whispered finally. “I don’t _want_ to tell anyone on you again, but what if you get _caught?”_ His voice dropped even lower as he said fearfully, “What if you get caught by Sirius _Black?”_

 “He hasn’t been seen in or around the castle since they upped the security,” Harry argued firmly, then dropped his voice as well. “Look, Neville, I was… I only went to kitchens to meet someone.”

 Neville’s eyes went wide. “Oh,” he squeaked, then cleared his throat. “Oh, um... alright.”

 Harry’s brow furrowed as Neville started turning a little pink.

 “I had to put them off before and I didn’t want to let them down,” Harry hastily tried to explain.

 Neville nodded. “No, yeah, I… I, um, get it, Harry,” he said. Then he cleared his throat again. “Um… who…” He trailed off, then managed to ask, “Do, uh, do Ron and Hermione know… about… this? Do they… do they _not_ know about this…?”

 “No, I haven’t told them yet,” Harry admitted. “I’m going to, I just… haven’t had the time.”

 He also hadn’t had the _words_ to explain to Ron and Hermione that he’d made friends with the Grim. At least, he hadn’t had the words to explain it in a way that wouldn’t make them freak out on him. It was just a dog, but Ron had seemed pretty shaken up by the whole omen of death thing and Hermione… well… Harry didn’t know about Hermione. She would probably be concerned about his safety, but… maybe Harry could frame it so Hermione would be helping him prove Professor Trelawney wrong.

  _Huh,_ Harry thought. _That might work._

 “You should tell them,” Neville said firmly, his expression concerned. “I _really_ don’t think you should be sneaking out, Harry, but… I’ve… I don’t think I’ve ever seen you do anything without telling Ron and Hermione before. They should… probably know? That you’re meeting someone?”

 Neville might have been right. The last bit of sneaking out all alone and after dark that Harry remembered were his trips to see the Mirror of Erised. Ron hadn’t approved of those… and he’d ended up being right when Headmaster Dumbledore himself came to tell Harry off. Making friends with a strange dog couldn’t be the same as wasting time in front of an enchanted mirror, but…

 “If you just tell them, then you probably won’t _have_ to sneak around,” Neville continued.

 That was a pretty good point. Harry didn’t mind having to sneak around curfews, prefects, professors, or most of his classmates and acquaintances, but he did kind of mind sneaking around Ron and Hermione. He still wasn’t sure why he hadn’t told them everything that had happened since Saturday, both his meetings with Cedric Diggory and the Grim, save that it was all kind of strange and embarrassing. Harry hadn’t had much luck making sense of it, so maybe his friends would.

 They had reached the corridor of the Potions classroom and stopped a ways away from the rest of the Gryffindor third-years. The Hufflepuff third-years were also lingering outside, clearly not eager to enter the classroom any sooner than absolutely necessary. Hermione was still chatting to Dean, but Ron was alternating between listening and glancing over at Harry and Neville.

 “Yeah, I should probably tell them,” Harry agreed. “Thanks, Neville.” 

 “You’re welcome, Harry,” Neville said relievedly.

 Harry would have immediately joined Ron and Hermione again, but he felt badly for Neville with the upcoming Potions lesson ahead of them. Snape seemed to hate Neville just as much, if not more, than he hated Harry. Harry and Neville had long-since entered an unspoken agreement to _never_ partner in Potions, wary of inviting a double dosage of Snape’s attention and wrath; Harry didn’t know how to help Neville out without making it worse on himself.

 While standing awkwardly next to Neville, Harry noticed one of the Hufflepuff third-years lingering nearby and looking at them. It was Hannah Abbott, a plump girl who frequently wore her hair in pigtails. Harry didn’t know much about her, beyond that she was shy and easily flustered and maybe a bit naïve. Ernie Macmillan had convinced her last year that Harry was the Heir of Slytherin, despite her apparently having thought him alright before, but she’d apologized at the End-of-Year Feast for that.

 Harry wondered at first what rumour about him was running around the school now, but he quickly noticed that she wasn’t actually looking at him. She kept looking at Neville, who was still staring at the floor, now looking somewhat miserable.

 “Oh, sorry, Hannah,” Harry realized. “Did you want to talk to Neville?”

 Hannah Abbott startled and Neville’s head snapped up in confusion. Harry looked between them feeling somewhat lost, because it had looked like Hannah had wanted to talk to Neville very badly about something. Since Harry didn’t have anything else to say to Neville – and didn’t know how to help Neville out when he himself was going to die – he felt that he might as well get out of Hannah’s way.

 “Aren’t you in Herbology Club together or something?” Harry said to Neville, because he was pretty sure that Neville had mentioned his club mates a few times before. Maybe he was wrong. “Never mind. I’ll just… get back to Ron and Hermione now. Thanks again, Neville.”

 Harry joined Ron and Hermione again, without waiting to be excused.

 “What was that about?” Ron asked him.

 “I’ll tell you later,” Harry promised him, reluctant but determined to do so.

 Ron raised his eyebrows “…Alright.”

 “We should go inside the classroom now,” Hermione informed them all, turning towards the Potions classroom door. “The bell’s going to ring in a minute and we don’t want to be marked late.”

 Ron groaned. “I don’t want to be marked _present.”_

 Harry laughed and followed Hermione in.

 The good news was that Snape didn’t say a word about the essays he’d assigned them while substituting for Professor Lupin. It looked like they’d escaped the essays after all.  

 And that was it. That was the only good news.

 Potions class was as miserable as they’d feared. Snape was in a mood fit to breathe fire, looming over all of them with a particularly loathing scowl and berating them harshly for any little infraction – no matter how minor or even imaginary in the eyes of any reasonable person. The foul and frightening air in the dungeons led many of them to make nervous mistakes, fumbling their ingredients as Snape stalked by or stirring their potions too quickly in the hopes it would make the class pass more quickly… which it didn’t, it only made Snape call them idiots and dunderheads and hopeless.

 Harry, as usual, seemed to bear the brunt of Snape’s temper. By the end of class, Harry had been told vehemently in a terse rant that teaching magic to anyone who “thought themselves too important to pay attention to their betters” was “a flagrant waste of time”, after having initially caught Snape’s attention for not cutting ginger root finely enough. And Harry had later lost Gryffindor fifteen points for “letting his partner do all the work”, when Ron was stirring their potion and Harry had nothing to do in the meanwhile. These weren’t Harry’s only supposed offenses, not by half, but they were the ones that bothered him the most in their unfairness.  

 When class was finally over, both Gryffindor and Hufflepuff left with dampened spirits and fewer points in both their House counters. But Harry left in the foulest mood of all of them.

 “We should’ve just broken our legs for real,” Ron muttered angrily, beside him. 

 “I thought so before, but that _really_ doesn’t seem like the right way to teach people anything. There must be a better way of going about it,” Hermione said on his other side, frowning, her cheeks still slightly pinked.

 “I can’t _concentrate_ with him looming over me ready to yell all the time,” Harry muttered in agreement.

 Hemione hadn’t partnered with anyone today – she usually didn’t, due to the odd number of the class – and she still hadn’t escaped a brush with Snape’s wrath despite turning in a perfect potion. _“Ah, Miss Granger, still working alone – the logical result, perhaps, of behaving like an insufferable know-it-all,”_ Snape had commented, offhandedly at the end of class, as everyone else in the class handed in potions that ranged from mediocre to disastrous.

 “We should find a way to just break _his_ legs for real,” Ron continued, having made a very good effort to murder Snape through glaring all class. His cheeks and ears were still red from anger at the comment Snape had made towards Hermione.

 Harry nodded, now daydreaming fondly about Snape tumbling down all of Hogwarts’ one-hundred and forty-two staircases. It was mean, perhaps, but so was Snape.

 “We can’t attack a teacher, Ronald.”

 “Why not? We’ve done it before. You should set him on fire again.”

  _“Ron,”_ Hermione hissed, looking around the corridor to see if anyone had overheard.

 It was thankfully empty, as Lavender and Parvati had rushed ahead to Divination, Neville had gone to the washroom to maybe throw up, everyone who wasn’t taking Divination had wandered off, and the Hufflepuffs had taken a different route. But Hermione still looked hunted.

 “You can’t just _say_ that. Someone might have _heard_ you.”

 “No one’s listening.”

 “A portrait could have heard you, though,” Harry pointed out, even though the only painting in this corridor was at the other end and was one of centaurs galloping across a distant field. The people in the portraits visited other paintings all the time and they all gossiped like mad.

 It still boggled his mind that Hermione had once set a teacher on fire in an attempt to save his life, even if it had been one as awful as Snape.  

 “Sorry,” Ron said, not sounding very sorry.

 Hermione sniffed disapprovingly, but let it go as a thought occurred to her. “Harry, did you tell Neville to partner with Hannah Abbott for Potions today?” she asked.

 “What?”

 “Well, usually he partners with Fay, but she went with Susan and Neville partnered with Hannah today, so I was wondering if you’d said something to him,” Hermione explained, which didn’t explain anything to Harry at all. “Because Hannah has top marks in Potions… after me and people like…” Her face screwed up in disapproval and she reluctantly said, “Malfoy.”

 Harry’s face screwed up as well. _Ugh._

 “No, I didn’t say anything to him about that,” Harry said.

 He hadn’t been paying much attention to who Neville partnered with, except to notice that Snape had picked on Neville markedly less than he’d picked on Harry today. The only good thing about Snape looming over Neville was that it meant he wasn’t looming over Harry, which wasn’t really good at all. It always seemed to come down to Harry or Neville in the end, and it wasn’t a competition that Harry had ever wanted to participate in or enjoyed winning. 

 “Nice of her to help him out,” Ron said. “I wouldn’t if I had any other choice… that wasn’t a Slytherin, of course.” Then before Hermione could scold him for this callousness too, he said, “You two ready for some Divination?”

 Harry groaned and Hermione immediately bit her lip.

 For all that none of them had been looking forward to Divination, it wasn’t nearly as bad as Harry had been expecting. Maybe it was that Trelawney’s lesson seemed positively pleasant in comparison with Snape’s lesson just before. Or maybe it was the fact that Harry and Ron spent most of Divination whispering jokes to each other and cracking up as quietly as they could – even Hermione snickered a few times, proving that she wasn’t entirely listening to Trelawney either.

 It started when, after the first time that class that Trelawney had again brought up how Harry was being haunted by the Grim, which was apparently coming into some sort of crossing with the moon in Harry’s newest cup of tea leaves, and would surely soon die.

 At this, Harry had unconcernedly leaned over to Ron and whispered, “After that Potions lesson, I wish, mate.”

 And Ron had choked on nothing, trying not to burst out laughing.

 By the end of the lesson, they had been getting some very dirty looks from Professor Trelawney and people like Lavender and Parvati. After the Potions lesson they’d just had, Harry couldn’t really bring himself to care, and went off to lunch in a much better mood than before.

 

~

 

 When they wandered around to Defence Against the Dark Arts after lunch, some of their fellow Gryffindors and all of the Ravenclaw third-years were again waiting outside the classroom. They didn’t look frightened or nervous, but there was still a tension in the air. Harry felt wary. Why wouldn’t they have gone in yet? Snape couldn’t possibly have been in there _again._  

 “What’s going on?” Hermione asked one of them.

 Anthony Goldstein, fiddling with a Rubik’s cube today, looked up and said quietly, “Professor Sinistra is in there right now, talking to Lupin.”

 Hermione frowned, but dropped her voice. “What about?”

 “Don’t know.” 

 “It must have something to do with that argument she had with Snape at dinner yesterday,” Padma Patil whispered confidently. “What else could it be about? I’ve _never_ seen her talk to Professor Lupin before now.”

 “Do you know what they were arguing about?”

 “We have a _guess,”_ Goldstein said, before Padma could say anything.

 She frowned at him and said, “An _educated_ guess.”

 “Fine, we have a _hypothesis._ A gossip hypothesis.” Just as Goldstein was rolling his eyes and clicking away at his toy, an idea seemed to strike him and he said suddenly, “We have a gosshypothesis.”

 “Oh, boo,” Padma said.

 “That’s bad, Tony,” Terry Boot whispered, shaking his head. 

 “Are you kidding me?” Goldstein said. “I’m using that _forever._ Making gosshypotheses is all we do. I need a proper word for when we’re serious about something and when someone is making bets on who proposed between Professor Sprout and her wife.”

 “Professor Sprout,” Lisa Turpin said.

 “It was _clearly_ Missus Sprout,” Kevin Entwhistle whispered back, like this was a very old argument.

 “Well? Let’s hear it then,” Ron interrupted. “This gosshypothesis.”

 “See, Professor Sinistra is the most common substitute teacher, since all her regular classes are at night,” Padma explained. “But we got taught by _Snape_ instead.”

 “Probably because he _does_ know more about general Dark Arts than Sinistra,” Terry Boot said.

 “ _Or_ because Sinistra knows more about _Potions_ than about the Dark Arts in general,” Padma argued. “We were taught by Snape when Snape should have been teaching his _own_ classes. He’s a core class teacher, he doesn’t have the free time to substitute for other classes. And whenever he’s gone, it’s almost _always_ Sinistra who covers his classes.”

 Hermione’s brow scrunched up as she thought about this – it was true, Sinistra had covered some of their Potions lessons in previous years – and she realized, “Professor Sinistra substituted for some of Professor Snape’s classes so he could teach some of Professor Lupin’s.”

 “Exactly,” Padma said smugly.

 “We still have to ask whoever had Potions that afternoon and the next day,” Goldstein pointed out. “But, yeah, supervising some assigned potions to brew is probably easier to substitute for than a Defence lecture, too.”

 “No one else had any _better_ ideas.”

 “But what were they arguing about, then?” Ron persisted. “Why’s she mad at him?”

 Anthony Goldstein and Padma Patil exchanged a look, then Goldstein said, “We’re pretty sure it has _something_ to do with Sinistra’s substitution for Snape’s classes so he could teach Lupin’s, but everything past that is more guessing than gosshypothesis.”

 “I still think it’s for going off the lesson plan,” Padma said.  

 “Maybe he didn’t say ‘thank you’ for her covering his classes,” Su Li suggested.

 “Then why is Lupin involved?” Terry Boot pointed out. “Why’s she talking to him now?”

 As the Ravenclaws tossed more questions and theories around and they stepped away so not to get caught in the debate, Harry overheard Hermione mutter something to herself. He and Ron exchanged a look with each other, eyebrows raised, then both looked at Hermione and her intense, thoughtful look. She was biting her lip, like she was holding something in.

 “Hermione?” Ron said.

 “Maybe she’s volunteering to substitute for his classes the next time he’s ill,” Hermione said quietly.

 “Instead of Snape? I hope so,” Ron agreed.

 Harry frowned at this idea. Not because he wanted Snape over Sinistra as a substitute teacher – not at all – but because their teachers didn’t often get sick or miss classes. “Do you think Professor Lupin is going to be sick again?”

 Hermione bit her lip again and said finally, “…I don’t know.”

 “Well, getting sick usually isn’t something you can predict. It’s nice of her to offer, though,” Ron said. “I’d take Sinistra over Snape any day. Remember last week, when we left Divination and Trelawney predicted we had some light in our future for once – she went on and _on_ about the good day ahead of us – and then we walked into Defence to see Snape _twice_ in one day? _Fuck,_ that was awful.”

 “I didn’t need any more enlightenment on how awful Snape is,” Harry agreed. “I hope Lupin doesn’t get sick again… even if Sinistra does cover the class instead.”

 “Yeah, I hate being sick,” Ron agreed.

 Harry did too, but it was more than that: Lupin had promised to talk to him today about learning how to fight off dementors. He remembered Lupin mentioned having chosen “a very inconvenient time” to fall ill and having a lot to do before the holidays. If Lupin fell ill again, then he might have to put off Harry’s dementor lessons forever, until it was too late for the next time Harry came across them.

 And Harry would have to listen to his mother die. Again.

 Silence fell over the corridor as the classroom door swung open and suddenly Professor Sinistra was looking down at all of them. She looked surprised at first, but then she smiled kindly at them.

 “Well… it appears I’ve been accidentally delaying your class,” she said, with a nod that tipped her fancy hat at them and made all the constellation creatures depicted on it shuffle for balance. “Thank you for not interrupting my interruption of your schedule. My apologies for keeping you waiting. Please remember to do your assigned reading for my class on Tuesday night.”

 Then she swept away down the corridor, leaving them all to speculate wildly on what she’d been talking about with Professor Lupin… and also to finally go in for Defence Against the Dark Arts with Lupin. Harry wondered if any of the Ravenclaws, some of whom looked like they were considering chasing after Sinistra, were just going to come out and ask Lupin about it.

 No one did ask Professor Lupin about Sinistra or Snape, and Lupin didn’t explain or mention it at all.

 Lupin greeted them warmly and then launched immediately into a continued lesson on hinkypunks and other bog-dwellers, except this time with a focus on the application of the techniques and practical spells they could use for avoiding these creatures and their tricks. Lupin had pushed all the desks to one side and managed to turn the freed section of his classroom into a swamp. He had them all wading around, to practice avoiding getting stuck in the muck of it however they could; whether than meant spelling the water aside entirely, trying to walk on it, or being able to quickly free themselves after getting caught.

 Harry wasn’t the only one to accidentally tumble over into the swamp. He was very grateful for the enormous pile of fluffy towels on Lupin’s desk. Also, for his decision to remove Lupin’s handkerchief from his pocket and leave it with his schoolbooks and such instead.

 After a few pointers from Neville, who hadn’t done this before either but had learned about some of these techniques before in Herbology Club, Harry had been wading through the waters just fine. So, despite tripping over into a swamp, Defence was by far the best lesson of Harry’s day. Harry had dealt with far worse than a bit of mud. It really was good to have Lupin back as a teacher, to listen and laugh and actually feel like he was learning something useful – and it had been good to be _good_ at something again. Harry was actually good at Defence, give or take a few initial fumbles, and he couldn’t have cared less about the mud when Lupin had awarded him points for helping one of the Ravenclaws get free.

 The Gryffindor and Ravenclaw third-years left Defence a little muddier but relatively clean - Lupin had ended the lesson by helping them all clean themselves up - and generally in a good mood. Harry could have done without the extra reading and short assignment, in order to make up for their missed lesson last week, but Defence was interesting enough. It could have been worse; Professor Lupin had made no mention of that werewolf essay he’d said they didn’t have to write.

 “I have to talk to Professor Lupin again,” Harry whispered to Ron and Hermione, as the class packed up and left with the bell. “About the lessons on fighting off dementors. I’ll see you in Transfiguration in a bit? Tell McGonagall where I am if I’m late.”

 “Sure,” Ron said, from where he was holding Hermione’s things so she could fix her hair, and nudged Hermione out the door. Ron pulled it shut behind him.

 Harry hitched his bag higher on his shoulder as he approached Lupin. Lupin had his back turned to Harry and was waving the muddy towels into a laundry bin with his wand. The desks and chairs were climbing over themselves so that an animated pair of mops could scrub their way over the muddied classroom floor. Harry nearly fell into the swamp section again, as he and the mops tried to politely dance around each other, but Lupin spun around just in time to point his wand and cast a spell that tugged Harry away to safety by the back of his robes.

 “My apologies, Harry,” Lupin said, as he moved forward and shooed the worried mops away. “I thought everyone had left and didn’t want to deny your coming yearmates the pleasure of making their own mess of my classroom. I don’t have much time between classes.”

 “Oh…” Harry said, wondering now if Lupin had forgotten his promise.

 Lupin immediately proved Harry’s worries wrong as he said, “But you’re here about the lessons on dementors, aren’t you? I did say to speak to me about it again today.”

 “Yeah, I-”

 Harry suddenly paused and looked down, where one of the mops was low-to-floor and trying to sneakily clean his shoes. Lupin chuckled and shooed the mop off again, then led Harry over to his desk, where they wouldn’t be disturbed by overzealous cleaning supplies. Lupin rummaged around with the papers stacked on his chair, behind the spare towels still on his desk, and handed Harry a handwritten list of what, at first glance, seemed to be book titles and authors.

 “Unfortunately, Harry, it truly does seem as though I will have a great deal of work to do… after falling ill last week and missing several of my lessons… but I did promise to help you and I will.” Lupin tapped the piece of parchment in Harry’s hand. “Dementors are complicated creatures and the magic involved in fighting them off is quite advanced. Until we can schedule some lessons, these are some books and articles I think may give you some insight and help you prepare.”

 “Alright,” Harry said, looking down at the list and some of the long, complicated-sounding titles. “Will I be able to find all of these in the library?”

 He was already planning on enlisting Hermione’s help here; not to read these for him, of course, but… maybe to help him understand them… and help him find them in the first place. Hermione could find anything in the library. Harry was partly convinced that she was determined to read every single book in Hogwarts and occasionally wondered if, when she finally ran out, she would turn on the Restricted Section with desperate determination.

 “You should be able to do so, provided you or they don’t get lost in there,” Lupin assured him with a smile. “I know reading probably wasn’t what you were looking forward to, but…”

 “No, no,” Harry assured him, looking over the list again. _“Anything’s_ good.”

 Any help was better than nothing.

 Lupin’s smile seemed to turn a little rueful, but he continued, “I don’t expect you to read through all of these from cover to cover, much less understand them perfectly. I wouldn’t expect perfect understanding of this kind of magic from my upper-year students.”

 Harry nodded. “Do you… do you want me to write something on it…?”

 “Oh, no. No. Honestly, Harry, if you give me anything more to mark, you may see me climbing out a window to flee for the hills. Which, if you can’t tell, isn’t encouragement.” Lupin pinched his nose and said firmly, “No, the very last thing I need right now is any more special essays.”

 “Oh, good, I don’t want to write one,” Harry said honestly.

 Lupin chuckled again. “I’m glad to see that we agree on something. However, I would recommend taking notes – at least writing down any questions that you have – any at all, even if they seem silly. Then I can answer whatever questions you have when we meet for our lessons.”

 That sounded pretty good to Harry. He nodded and tucked the list safely into his bag.

 “So, um, when won’t you be busy anymore?”

 Lupin sighed tiredly, leaning against his desk. “That is the question, isn’t it? I don’t want to keep you on weeknights, when you may have homework and I have lessons the next day. How are your Friday afternoons?”

 “We usually go to Hagrid’s on Fridays after class, but I can-”

 “No, no,” Lupin assured him quickly. “I know that Hagrid looks forward your company, Harry, and I couldn’t deprive you of his delightful rock cakes-”

 “Just of my teeth,” Harry mumbled.

 Lupin laughed, apparently caught off guard again, and continued with brighter eyes, “Well, now. How are you weekends? I have an unfortunate amount of marking this weekend and I don’t have proper lessons prepared yet, but… perhaps we can at least check in on your research progress next Saturday?”

 Harry pursed his lips. “The Hufflepuff-Ravenclaw match is…”

 “Ah,” Lupin said bemusedly. “Say no more. _Quidditch._ I understand.”

 Harry sighed with relief, very grateful not to have to choose between watching the Quidditch match and taking potentially life-saving lessons on how to fight dementors with his favourite teacher. Lupin’s lessons probably would have won out in the end, but Harry _really_ didn’t want to miss the match. Gryffindor’s chances at the Quidditch Cup depended on the results of this next game and Wood was _insistent_ that they all see Ravenclaw play.

 “How about the next Saturday afternoon, then?”

 “I… _might_ have Quidditch practice?” Harry said awkwardly, not enjoying having to keep turning Lupin's suggestions down.

 Now it was seeming like _Harry_ was the one too busy for lessons on dementors.

 But Lupin just smiled at him. “All Saturday afternoon?”

 Harry looked up at him despairingly. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I hope not.”

 Angelina would stop their captain from doing that. Probably.

 “Yes, Mister Wood certainly is… enthusiastic, isn’t he?” Lupin said wryly. “Why don’t you speak to him about it and ask him to keep some part of the day free? Any time before dinner should suit me.”

 “I can do that,” Harry agreed.

 Oliver Wood would probably approve greatly of Harry learning how to fight off dementors. Probably mostly because it might keep them from losing their future matches if the dementors showed up again. Wood hadn’t said anything about the dementors last practice – which Harry thought might’ve been the work of the rest of them team, especially Angelina and the twins – so Harry hadn’t had reason to bring up the possibility of his taking extra lessons with Professor Lupin yet.

 “Excellent. Why don’t you keep me apprised of that over the next two weeks and we’ll set up a proper time once you’ve made sense of your other engagements?” Lupin said. “Shall we try to have an answer by, say, next Thursday?”

 “Yeah… Yes, next Thursday,” Harry agreed eagerly.

 “Let me know if you have trouble finding any of those sources, I may be able to find other copies from the personal collections of the staff. Now, you had best go along to Transfiguration, Harry, before McGonagall accuses me of making a habit of making you late for her class.”

 “Right,” Harry said. He was preparing to turn away when he remembered, “Wait, professor, I have your handkerchief.” He fumbled into his bag for the handkerchief he’d borrowed on Monday and left by his books. “Here, sir.”

 Lupin accepted it with another gentle smile. “Ah, thank you, Harry.”

 “I-”

 Whatever Harry had been about to say was cut off, as the door behind him swung open. Harry turned around to see Hannah Abbott peeking her head through the door, presumably for Lupin’s upcoming lesson with the Hufflepuffs and Slytherins. She caught sight of Harry still speaking to Professor Lupin, mouthed the word  _sorry,_ and immediately popped back out again, closing the door behind her.

 Harry turned back to Lupin, about to excuse himself so he wasn’t taking up any more of anyone’s time.

 But, looking at Lupin again, Harry noticed that his teacher had paused and was looking at the handkerchief with an odd expression on his face. Was something wrong? Lupin’s smile had disappeared entirely, replaced with a slightly furrowed brow and frown at the handkerchief in his hand. Harry watched, with uncertainty and then horror, as Professor Lupin reached into the handkerchief with his other hand and withdrew something from it.

 Between Lupin's fingers, being raised to his face, was one long, black hair.

 Harry panicked.

 “That’s probably mine,” he blurted quickly. “Sorry.”

 It was a lie and a terrible one. Harry’s hair wasn’t that long or so straight; the only thing it matched the hair in was colour. And yet, in his panic, it felt necessary… better than nothing. It felt so important that Harry not do anything to risk his new canine friend, especially just when the Grim was getting fed and Harry had decided to finally tell Ron and Hermione. Even if he liked Lupin, he didn't know if Lupin would approve of Harry making friends with a strange stray dog... or of the Grim wandering the castle. 

 Lupin tore his gaze away from the hair and looked at Harry with an unreadable expression.

 “I mean, it’s probably from my friend’s cat,” Harry said, which was a much better lie. Lupin probably hadn’t seen Hermione’s cat Crookshanks and there had to be at least  _one_  cat in Hogwarts with long black fur that Harry could claim belonged to a friend. “Sorry. I should have… watched out for that.” 

 Lupin's expression remained unreadable, as he stared at Harry. He looked between Harry and the black hair a few times. 

 “…No harm done, Harry,” Lupin said finally. 

 Then tucked the hair back into the handkerchief, folded the handkerchief up carefully, and tucked the handkerchief and the hair back into his pocket. When he looked up again, he smiled at Harry, but the expression was somewhat tense. It didn’t reach his eyes this time. 

 Harry wanted to sigh in relief, but he couldn't. He couldn't tell if Lupin had believed him. 

 “Well,” Lupin declared firmly, standing up. “You’d best be on your way now, Harry! One class left for the both of us. I’ll see you again on Monday.”

 “…Right,” Harry agreed.

 But he lingered for a few seconds longer. He wanted to know what the strange expression still lingering on Professor Lupin’s face was. He regretted enormously not having washed the handkerchief again after the Grim had handled it last night. Did Lupin not like animals? Harry had so many questions and no words or shape for them, nor was he certain that he could ask these unknown questions of Lupin at all.

 “Bye, sir,” Harry said awkwardly, finally, instead of all his questions, as he turned towards the door to leave.

 “Goodbye, Harry,” Lupin said kindly, as he turned away as well.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- "In bocca al lupo" and its response "crepi il lupo" mean "into the mouth of the wolf" and "may the wolf die" respectively. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_bocca_al_lupo>. (I just thought it was neat and an interesting tidbit to up the tension. I'm not going to kill anyone.) 
> 
> \- I desperately wanted to make a Seamus Finnigan's "I heard a dementor Kissed her and _it_ died!" style joke about Snape never getting sick, but I couldn't come up with anything that seemed to fit rightly. (This would be a reference to a line from Starkid's [A Very Potter Sequel musical](https://www.youtube.com/user/StarKidPotter/featured), which everyone who's an HP fan should try to watch at least once. In the musical, Seamus was talking about Umbridge.) I just feel like I should reference AVPM more. 
> 
> \- If I'm continuing with hashtags, I feel like the new one should be #Pray for Neville Longbottom. Harry swoops in like he might threaten Neville, implies he's dating someone and hasn't told his friends, accidentally kind of wingmans Neville, then slides out like this is no big deal. (I have no strong feelings on the canonical post-canon pairing of Neville/Hannah, but I do think it's funny to imagine Hannah Abbott determinedly being on the "I Liked Neville Longbottom BEFORE It Was Cool Because Neville Longbottom Was ALWAYS Cool" team.) 
> 
> \- Trelawney's potential for foreshadowing is a little too good to resist. I think I kind of headcanon her as having decent insight but having next to ZERO ability to interpret it well and then relate it to other people. So, I may try to drop in some fun tidbits whenever Trelawney happens to come up. 
> 
> \- _“Thanks,” Harry said wryly, then looked at the cloak in his hands. “Oh, you shed on everything you touch, don’t you?” There was black dog fur all over his dad’s cloak now. “I guess it’ll still work. I won’t be complaining about dog fur on the cloak if Snape comes around the bend.”_ \- Ch 9: A Dog and his Boy. 
> 
> \- Not gonna lie, when I came up with the dog hair thing for the handkerchief, I had to put my hand on my chest like an old matron and walk around my house for a bit to calm down. Then again, a few times, every time I thought about it because oh, shoot, Harry, what's Lupin going to make of that? Oh, I've been looking forward to that moment for a while now. (How familiar do you think Remus Lupin is with black dog hair all over his stuff?)
> 
> \- I was thinking about doing a DVD commentary for this fic sometime. Not the whole thing, probably, but at least one chapter. Pulling all the threads of this fic together in a canon-like style is an interesting and entertaining process for me.

**Author's Note:**

> [All my other Harry Potter fics can be found here! Enjoy!](http://archiveofourown.org/series/282654) ~ [My Tumblr!](http://lullabyknell.tumblr.com)
> 
> And if you wish to share this work with your friends and followers, [here's a tumblr post to rec and reblog!](https://lullabyknell.tumblr.com/post/152981287048)
> 
> If you haven't yet read it, this fic also now has a prequel of sorts. It's a character study of this interpretation of Cedric Diggory, called [Concerning Rabbits](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14176482).


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